Browne: Persad-Bissessar isolating T&T from Caricom

While the gov­ern­ment has yet to an­nounce who will lead Trinidad and To­ba­go’s del­e­ga­tion to next month’s 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of Cari­com heads in St Kitts and Nevis, for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Dr. Amery Browne be­lieves Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is like­ly to at­tend.

Speak­ing out­side Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Browne again ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of break­ing with decades of re­gion­al­ist tra­di­tion, claim­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go is be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly dis­tanced from Cari­com at a crit­i­cal mo­ment for the re­gion.

“The prime min­is­ter’s pos­ture marks an un­prece­dent­ed shift in the coun­try’s for­eign pol­i­cy,” Browne told Guardian Me­dia. He not­ed that pre­vi­ous lead­ers con­sis­tent­ly pri­ori­tised re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion.

“This is the first prime min­is­ter of this coun­try who has sought to iso­late Trinidad and To­ba­go from Cari­com and to at­tack Cari­com as an in­sti­tu­tion the way this prime min­is­ter is do­ing. Even in her for­mer tenure, she con­duct­ed her­self as a re­gion­al­ist. Some­thing dra­mat­ic has hap­pened—she has de­part­ed from all prece­dent. ANR Robin­son, Bas­deo Pan­day, and all PNM prime min­is­ters were re­gion­al­ists.”

Browne al­so high­light­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ab­sence from re­cent Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ings and what he de­scribed as lim­it­ed en­gage­ment with re­gion­al coun­ter­parts. While he stopped short of pre­dict­ing whether she will at­tend the up­com­ing sum­mit, he sug­gest­ed re­cent de­vel­op­ments could prompt a change in course.

“We’ve ex­pressed—I’ve ex­pressed, and the leader of the op­po­si­tion has clear­ly ex­pressed—our dis­ap­point­ment that the Prime Min­is­ter has not at­tend­ed past heads of gov­ern­ment con­fer­ences, has not at­tend­ed any in-per­son meet­ings of Cari­com, and has not en­gaged prop­er­ly with fel­low Cari­com heads. Will she at­tend on this oc­ca­sion? That’s up to her. Giv­en some re­cent changes, maybe she’ll make the jour­ney this time. Let’s see.”

Cari­com’s 50th reg­u­lar meet­ing will take place in Bas­seterre, St Kitts and Nevis, from Feb­ru­ary 24 to 27 and will fo­cus on re­gion­al uni­ty amid geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, mi­gra­tion pres­sures, and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

Since win­ning the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has not at­tend­ed any in-per­son Cari­com meet­ings.

At a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress me­dia brief­ing last week, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers said un­re­solved prepa­ra­tions for the sum­mit have de­layed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­ci­sion on its del­e­ga­tion.

“There are sev­er­al mat­ters en­gag­ing Cari­com’s at­ten­tion con­cern­ing or teth­ered to the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing card­ed for the end of Feb­ru­ary in St Kitts and Nevis that have not been set­tled yet. Based on that, Cab­i­net can­not take a de­ci­sion on the del­e­ga­tion that will be at­tend­ing un­til those mat­ters are re­solved,” Sobers said, adding he hopes the is­sues will be set­tled by the end of the week.