Persad-Bissessar escalates Caricom dispute

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has in­ten­si­fied her crit­i­cism of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), ac­cus­ing the re­gion­al body of con­ceal­ing what she de­scribed as a cor­rupt back­room op­er­a­tion that un­der­mines the or­gan­i­sa­tion and harms Caribbean cit­i­zens.

On April 11, Cari­com pub­lished a state­ment on its Face­book page from Chair­man, Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts and Nevis, Dr. Ter­rance Drew. The state­ment sought to dis­miss con­cerns raised by Trinidad and To­ba­go re­gard­ing the reap­point­ment of her as SG.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the state­ment failed to ad­dress key is­sues, in­clud­ing a What­sApp mes­sage sent on Feb­ru­ary 26, to all Cari­com For­eign Min­is­ters. “Nowhere in the state­ment craft­ed by GS Bar­nett did she ad­dress the What­sApp mes­sage sent on the COF­COR What­sApp group to all Cari­com For­eign Min­is­ters at 8:55 a.m.,” she stat­ed.

She added that Min­is­ter Sean Sobers viewed the mes­sage at 8:56 a.m. and that its con­tents were lat­er con­firmed by Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Cari­com Di­rec­tor with Chef de Cab­i­net Jan­ice Miller. “Yet to date, not a sin­gle mem­ber of the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at or Cari­com For­eign Min­is­ter who is a par­tic­i­pant of that What­sApp group show the de­cen­cy, hon­esty or courage to ac­knowl­edge that Min­is­ter Sobers is be­ing truth­ful,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She de­scribed Cari­com’s lead­er­ship as dys­func­tion­al and in­com­pe­tent, claim­ing that ap­point­ments are of­ten based on po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions rather than mer­it. “This is what hap­pens when in­stead of ap­point­ing com­pe­tent tech­nocrats to run the or­ga­ni­za­tion, friends, par­ty hacks, rel­a­tives of politi­cians and af­fil­i­ates of re­gion­al sis­ter par­ties are dumped in­to man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions to main­tain the old boys club or­der,” she de­clared.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged that Cari­com’s op­er­a­tions are fre­quent­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed to ben­e­fit aligned po­lit­i­cal par­ties, while ex­clud­ing those out­side the en­trenched po­lit­i­cal class. She re­it­er­at­ed her de­mand for doc­u­men­ta­tion, in­clud­ing min­utes and per­for­mance ap­praisals, to sup­port the reap­point­ment process. “Sure­ly there must be time­stamped min­utes, per­for­mance ap­praisals etc. Even vil­lage coun­cils and sports clubs doc­u­ment their meet­ings far less an or­ga­ni­za­tion over half a cen­tu­ry old,” she said.

She em­pha­sised that Trinidad and To­ba­go, hav­ing in­vest­ed bil­lions of dol­lars in­to CARI­COM over 52 years, will not ex­it the or­gan­i­sa­tion. “We helped build this or­ga­ni­za­tion and will be a part of fix­ing it to ben­e­fit all the peo­ple of Cari­com,” she af­firmed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar stressed that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic, se­cu­ri­ty, and de­vel­op­ment fu­ture is tied to Cari­com and can­not be com­pro­mised by in­ter­nal po­lit­i­cal ma­neu­ver­ing. “This mat­ter will con­tin­ue to be ruth­less­ly and re­lent­less­ly pub­licly es­ca­lat­ed and pros­e­cut­ed un­til per­sons are held ac­count­able for their odi­ous ac­tions and prop­er re­forms are made,” she said.

She re­peat­ed her warn­ing from De­cem­ber 2025: “Cari­com can­not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in this dys­func­tion­al and self-de­struc­tive man­ner as it is a grave dis­ser­vice to the peo­ple of the Caribbean.”