Mem­bers of the CARI­COM fam­i­ly nor­mal­ly avoid launch­ing im­bal­anced and dis­re­spect­ful de­scrip­tives about neigh­bour­ing Mem­ber States.

The re­gion re­cent­ly wit­nessed some politi­cians in Guyana of­fer­ing pub­lic analy­sis of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, with one of them de­scrib­ing his own dis­course in this man­ner—“it sounds ar­ro­gant, but it’s not hos­tile or xeno­pho­bic”.

Well, the truth is that some of the com­ments have been all three: ar­ro­gant, hos­tile and xeno­pho­bic.

This comes hot on the heels of op­po­si­tion politi­cians in Trinidad and To­ba­go seek­ing to ob­struct the ex­pan­sion of the CSME’s free move­ment regime and to block Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most re­cent steps to­ward full com­pli­ance with our oblig­a­tions un­der the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas.

Even be­fore this, we have seen some op­po­si­tion politi­cians in Trinidad and To­ba­go ad­vanc­ing an­ti-CARI­COM talk­ing points, fo­cused on in­su­lar­i­ty and iso­la­tion­ism and of course re­main­ing un­sup­port­ive of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice.

They now seem to be try­ing to draw strength for their ef­forts from a nar­ra­tive from over­seas that paints a one-sided and den­i­grat­ing im­age of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

So what ex­act­ly is this re­peat­ed pub­lic com­men­tary about Trinidad and To­ba­go by a few Guyanese pub­lic fig­ures de­signed to achieve?

Who is their tar­get au­di­ence, and what are their ob­jec­tives?

The truth is that T&T cit­i­zens are amongst the warmest and most gen­er­ous in the world. Noth­ing any­one says can change that. We are in fact large­ly a na­tion of im­mi­grants.

There are many Guyanese and Ja­maicans and Grena­di­ans and Bar­ba­di­ans and Vin­cen­tians and oth­ers from the re­gion who mi­grat­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go over the gen­er­a­tions and have done ex­treme­ly well for them­selves and are now an in­te­gral part of our di­verse, melt­ing-pot so­ci­ety.

There are hun­dreds of thou­sands of Caribbean na­tion­als who have had the same pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence here and have been wel­comed with open arms and hos­pi­tal­i­ty; they have thrived in Trinidad and To­ba­go, they have helped de­vel­op many of our in­dus­tries, and they love our land with all their heart.

There have been ex­am­ples of mis­treat­ment and a bet­ter-than-thou at­ti­tude as ex­ists in every so­ci­ety, but it is a com­plete dis­ser­vice to our coun­try to make those ex­cep­tions the rule and to dis­re­spect­ful­ly paint an en­tire na­tion with one broad brush.

Many Guyanese have done very well here and re­mit­ted mon­ey back to Guyana over the gen­er­a­tions and many con­tin­ue to do so. That is some­thing that we can be very proud of, as we are all part of one CARI­COM fam­i­ly.

The warmth and gen­eros­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go to­ward Guyana goes well be­yond re­ceiv­ing so many of their na­tion­als who were and are seek­ing a bet­ter life.

When the na­tion of Guyana need­ed it most, they were able to ben­e­fit from the gen­er­ous write-off of bil­lions in debt owed to Trinidad and To­ba­go. In­ter­est­ing­ly this was nev­er ref­er­enced in the re­cent neg­a­tive “analy­sis”.

When Guyana was on the brink of blood­shed and wide­spread civ­il un­rest af­ter an elec­tions fi­as­co, it was our Prime Min­is­ter, Dr the Ho­n­ourable Kei­th Row­ley, who went there with the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos and a CARI­COM del­e­ga­tion to help en­sure that democ­ra­cy and peace would pre­vail.

When Guyanese fish­er­men were de­tained by Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, I swift­ly sum­moned the Am­bas­sador of Venezuela to the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs.

I told him that Trinidad and To­ba­go stands with Guyana and that we view the plight of those fish­er­men just the same as if they were from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

When Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley was Chair of CARI­COM in 2021, we gave res­olute sup­port to the Guyanese po­si­tion in the claims be­ing made by Venezuela for much of their ter­ri­to­ry.

We are one fam­i­ly.

When mas­sive floods hit Guyana it was our Gov­ern­ment and our pri­vate sec­tor who spared no ef­fort or ex­pense in procur­ing and of­fer­ing as­sis­tance to our Guyanese broth­ers and sis­ters in their time of need.

Speak­ing pub­licly about Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go, in the man­ner that has been done re­cent­ly, with­out ref­er­enc­ing such tan­gi­ble re­al­i­ties does great dis­ser­vice to the truth and is an of­fence against the warmth that our peo­ple and na­tions have shared and must con­tin­ue to share.

Some of the re­cent com­ments against Trinidad and To­ba­go strike a stark con­trast to Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­fan Ali’s pub­lic com­ments, which have been con­sis­tent­ly pos­i­tive and fo­cused on clos­er re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is a proud and sov­er­eign re­pub­lic.

We are not “falling apart”, notwith­stand­ing any rhetoric from any politi­cian or as­pi­rant at home or over­seas. Just like every oth­er small is­land state in our re­gion, we are emerg­ing from the most dev­as­tat­ing pan­dem­ic of our life­times, and we are work­ing to re­vi­talise our econ­o­my. Our pri­vate sec­tor, in­clud­ing our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and ser­vices in­dus­try, con­tin­ues to be out­stand­ing in per­for­mance with­in the coun­try and re­gion. There are many economies with­in our re­gion that are as de­pen­dent on tourism as ours has been on petro­chem­i­cals, but that has nev­er been the ba­sis for us to po­lit­i­cal­ly dis­par­age each oth­er as we each and all seek to ex­pand our eco­nom­ic base.

We cer­tain­ly have dif­fer­ences of opin­ion amongst our­selves, but when those dif­fer­ences are pros­e­cut­ed with dis­re­spect, the mes­sage los­es any po­ten­tial for a pos­i­tive out­come.

This is a re­minder that we can be proud of our re­spec­tive na­tions whilst at the same time avoid­ing dis­re­spect and im­bal­ance in our pub­lic dis­course about oth­er Mem­ber States.

Ar­ro­gance and xeno­pho­bia have no place in the mod­ern pol­i­tics of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty...and any pub­lic fig­ure in our re­gion who seeks to nour­ish in­su­lar­i­ty and dis­til hos­til­i­ty with­in CARI­COM in the year 2022 has not been pay­ing suf­fi­cient at­ten­tion to the harsh lessons of the past.