Bad flu forces PM out of CHOGM

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last night con­firmed that she was forced to pull out of at­tend­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) 2026 in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da this week af­ter con­tract­ing the flu.

Her con­fir­ma­tion came in a What­sApp mes­sage to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on her late with­draw­al.

“Came down with bad case of flu,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote.

Hours ear­li­er, how­ev­er, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs had con­firmed her with­draw­al af­ter ini­tial­ly say­ing at the start of the day that she would be trav­el­ling to St John's to lead the coun­try's del­e­ga­tion to the high-lev­el meet­ing.

“The Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, will not be at­tend­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing as pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced. Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, the Ho­n­ourable Sean Sobers will rep­re­sent the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go at the meet­ing. The Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter there­fore re­verts to her ex­ist­ing OPM sched­ule,” the sec­ond state­ment said.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter al­so made the an­nounce­ment that Per­sad-Bisses­sar would not be at­tend­ing the meet­ing. No rea­son was pro­vid­ed for the Prime Min­is­ter’s with­draw­al in ei­ther re­lease.

The ear­li­er an­nounce­ment from the Cari­com and For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry had out­lined an ex­ten­sive pro­gramme of en­gage­ments for Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was ex­pect­ed to de­part T&T yes­ter­day for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

Her sched­uled pro­gramme in­clud­ed a re­cep­tion and din­ner host­ed by His Majesty, King Charles III, Head of the Com­mon­wealth, for new heads of gov­ern­ment, as well as ex­ec­u­tive ses­sions on trade and in­vest­ment, cli­mate fi­nance and in­vest­ing in peo­ple.

She was al­so ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Fo­rum and the Heads of Gov­ern­ment Re­treat.

The min­istry had fur­ther an­nounced plans for sev­er­al bi­lat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al en­gage­ments, in­clud­ing a Cari­com-Cana­da meet­ing host­ed by Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney, bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions with Unit­ed King­dom Prime Min­is­ter Andy Burn­ham and Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Al­banese, as well as meet­ings with oth­er Com­mon­wealth lead­ers.

The For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­istry said these en­gage­ments would pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­plore co­op­er­a­tion in ar­eas in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, in­vest­ment, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, cli­mate re­silience and sus­tain­able growth.

The sud­den re­ver­sal, how­ev­er, drew crit­i­cism from for­mer For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne, who, with­out the in­for­ma­tion Guardian Me­dia re­ceived about her ill­ness, ques­tioned the Prime Min­is­ter’s at­ten­dance record at im­por­tant re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al en­gage­ments.

In a strong­ly word­ed re­sponse, Browne de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar as hav­ing “a very low at­ten­dance record at im­por­tant meet­ings and sum­mits.”

He point­ed to her ab­sence from the Cari­com heads re­treat ear­li­er this year, which he said was fol­lowed by an em­bar­rass­ing episode in­volv­ing a sea­sick For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sobers.

“Cit­i­zens would re­call that ear­li­er this year, she ab­sent­ed her­self from the Cari­com Heads Re­treat in Nevis, with no rea­son pro­vid­ed, and that led to a saga that was most em­bar­rass­ing to a sea­sick Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and, by ex­ten­sion, to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Browne said.

He went fur­ther, ac­cus­ing the Prime Min­is­ter of hav­ing the “low­est work eth­ic in our his­to­ry.”

Browne al­so took aim at what he de­scribed as her di­vi­sive and ag­gres­sive rhetoric and in­sults on so­cial me­dia.

“Be­sides her usu­al di­vi­sive and ag­gres­sive rhetoric and in­sults via so­cial me­dia, it is un­like­ly that her lo­ca­tion in Trinidad or An­tigua would make much dif­fer­ence to the peo­ple on the ground,” he said.

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed be­lieves the Prime Min­is­ter’s ab­sence should not be treat­ed as a ma­jor na­tion­al set­back, pro­vid­ed the del­e­ga­tion is ad­e­quate­ly briefed and the planned en­gage­ments are car­ried out.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on the Prime Min­is­ter’s ab­sence from the sum­mit, Mo­hammed said the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter could ef­fec­tive­ly lead the del­e­ga­tion and en­sure T&T’s in­ter­ests are rep­re­sent­ed.

“So, I think we need to calm down. While it is that there was a pact sched­uled for the Prime Min­is­ter to at­tend Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment, I be­lieve that once there is a clear brief in front of the head of the del­e­ga­tion, who would be the For­eign Min­is­ter, and the itin­er­ary that was planned is still ex­e­cut­ed with req­ui­site rep­re­sen­ta­tion through min­is­ters, we should be fine,” he said.

Mo­hammed ac­knowl­edged that com­mu­ni­ca­tion sur­round­ing the change in plans would have been wel­comed, but cau­tioned against rush­ing to crit­i­cise the Prime Min­is­ter.

“Com­mu­ni­ca­tion would be nice to have with re­gard to, you know, some lit­tle de­tails, change of sched­ule. I mean, it’s the things that are hap­pen­ing in the space,” he said.

He al­so not­ed that T&T would not be the on­ly Com­mon­wealth coun­try with­out its head of gov­ern­ment phys­i­cal­ly at­tend­ing the sum­mit, point­ing to Grena­da’s up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion as an ex­am­ple of com­pet­ing na­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“The Prime Min­is­ter not at­tend­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment is not the end of the world. It is not,” Mo­hammed said.

He added that the ef­fec­tive­ness of the na­tion­al del­e­ga­tion should ul­ti­mate­ly be mea­sured by whether it has suf­fi­cient rep­re­sen­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate in the sched­uled dis­cus­sions and achieve the ob­jec­tives out­lined in the meet­ing’s agen­da.

“From my per­spec­tive, once our del­e­ga­tion is well rep­re­sent­ed with more than enough per­sons to fill the spaces, to achieve the goals as set out by the agen­da put for­ward and the sched­ule that was put for­ward, we should be OK,” he said.

Mo­hammed fur­ther cau­tioned against mak­ing as­sump­tions about the rea­sons be­hind the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion.

“Let’s re­mem­ber as well that the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, like oth­er heads of gov­ern­ment, is a hu­man be­ing and things come up. We shouldn’t be quick to as­sume, pre­sume or to crit­i­cise,” he said.

The meet­ing brings to­geth­er lead­ers of the Com­mon­wealth’s 56 in­de­pen­dent and sov­er­eign mem­ber coun­tries to dis­cuss shared chal­lenges and strength­en co­op­er­a­tion.

CHOGM 2026 is be­ing held un­der the theme “Ac­cel­er­at­ing Part­ner­ships and In­vest­ment for a Pros­per­ous Com­mon­wealth.”

This year’s gath­er­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant for the Caribbean, as it marks the first time in 17 years that CHOGM is be­ing host­ed in the re­gion. Trinidad and To­ba­go last host­ed the meet­ing in No­vem­ber 2009.