Sobers skipped retreat due to seasickness issue—Gonsalves

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The for­mer prime min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines has made a bomb­shell al­le­ga­tion, claim­ing that For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers was not barred or “dis­in­vit­ed” from the re­treat in Nevis, but in­stead in­formed re­gion­al of­fi­cials that he could not make the trip by boat due to sea­sick­ness.

While Dr Ralph Gon­salves was not in at­ten­dance in St Kitts and Nevis in Feb­ru­ary for the last Cari­com meet­ing af­ter los­ing the elec­tions in his coun­try, he said he still has sources which are “100 per cent re­li­able.”

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day that Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with at least four oth­er coun­tries, were “dis­in­vit­ed” from the re­treat in Nevis where the reap­point­ment of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett was rat­i­fied, af­ter their re­spec­tive Heads of Gov­ern­ment de­part­ed the con­fer­ence ear­ly.

How­ev­er, Dr Ralph Gon­salves said that Sobers may be “omit­ting” key de­tails.

Speak­ing on Star Ra­dio in his home coun­try, Gon­salves claimed, “From more than one re­li­able source, I was in­formed that Kam­la said that she was not go­ing to Nevis. She was send­ing Sobers, her For­eign Min­is­ter. And Sobers said that he can’t go to Nevis be­cause he gets sea­sick and he has to take a boat. It’s five min­utes be­tween St Kitts and Nevis.”

The for­mer PM added, “So he ab­sent­ed him­self and no­body else was nom­i­nat­ed who wouldn’t get sick to at­tend the meet­ing.”

While Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Sobers main­tain that Cari­com breached the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas by fail­ing to recog­nise Sobers’ au­thor­i­ty to vote as head of T&T’s del­e­ga­tion af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­par­ture, Ralph Gon­salves is point­ing to Ar­ti­cle 28 of the Treaty.

Gon­salves said, ac­cord­ing to that ar­ti­cle, con­fer­ence de­ci­sions must be ap­proved by all mem­bers and are bind­ing, but ab­sten­tions do not in­val­i­date de­ci­sions once three-quar­ters of mem­bers vote in favour. Mem­bers who ab­stain or do not vote are count­ed as ab­sten­tions, and any par­ty to a dis­pute or fac­ing sanc­tions is barred from vot­ing on that mat­ter.

And while Sobers main­tains that the ap­point­ment of a Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al was not on the pro­vi­sion­al Cari­com agen­da, Gon­salves posit­ed, “I have seen the agen­da which was ap­proved, that in cau­cus there would be sev­er­al mat­ters, gov­er­nance of Cari­com, which in­cludes the ap­point­ment of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, se­cu­ri­ty ques­tions and fi­nance. So you don’t want to go to dis­cuss those things?”

Gon­salves said he al­so took note of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s threat to cut Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fund­ing to Cari­com’s an­nu­al bud­get.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Sobers, T&T con­tributes around $126 mil­lion per year. But Gon­salves said while Trinidad and To­ba­go is the biggest fi­nan­cial con­trib­u­tor, it al­so ben­e­fits the most.

“I know Kam­la is say­ing that she con­tributes so much mon­ey to Cari­com. Well, the prin­ci­pal ben­e­fi­cia­ry in the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my is Trinidad and To­ba­go, by far.”

And he said if T&T de­cides to pull out of Cari­com, it will hurt its busi­ness sec­tor.

“At the mo­ment, they have a right of es­tab­lish­ment in pro­vi­sion of goods or ser­vices. They would not get pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to the mar­ket. They will have to pay the ad­di­tion­al du­ties, which are put at 15 per cent. You know the com­mon ex­ter­nal tar­iff now. So Amer­i­can goods, for in­stance, would be­come more com­pet­i­tive. Goods out of Puer­to Ri­co and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic would be­come more com­pet­i­tive. The Trinidad econ­o­my will take a hit. Un­em­ploy­ment will hap­pen.”

More­over, he said it will take at least a year for this coun­try to for­mal­ly pull out of the re­gion­al bloc.

Gon­salves al­so com­ment­ed on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­duct dur­ing the Heads of Gov­ern­ment con­fer­ence in Feb­ru­ary.

First­ly, he did not like the Prime Min­is­ter’s speech dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, where she was high­ly crit­i­cal of Cari­com.

“It is a bad speech. A bad speech in many, many ma­te­r­i­al par­tic­u­lars. And not con­ducive to uni­ty, Cari­com uni­ty.”

He said he heard the PM was al­so ab­sent from most meet­ings.

“I’m told that Kam­la at­tend­ed on­ly one meet­ing with Cari­com. It’s the one where Cari­com and (Mar­co) Ru­bio had a meet­ing. And she didn’t grace any oth­er meet­ings.”

Gon­salves, who has the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the longest serv­ing Prime Min­is­ter in Cari­com’s his­to­ry, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent crit­i­cisms over Cari­com is “Trumpian” in na­ture, and he is ad­vis­ing her to let this mat­ter go.

“In this Cari­com, you have to give and take. This is not an is­sue on which there should be a defin­ing is­sue be­tween you and Cari­com.”

He al­so said it was “un­for­tu­nate” that the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go had placed Dr Car­la Bar­nett, whom he de­scribed as a “dis­tin­guished pub­lic ser­vant,” in an “em­bar­rass­ing po­si­tion.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get a re­sponse from Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day; how­ev­er, they did not re­ply be­fore press time.