Rampersad: Midterms unlikely to shift T&T-US ties

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad be­lieves the out­come of the Unit­ed States midterm elec­tions is un­like­ly to change Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy align­ment with Wash­ing­ton, de­spite the De­moc­rats mak­ing gains in Con­gress.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Ram­per­sad said the re­sults sent a warn­ing to the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty about de­clin­ing pub­lic sup­port but cau­tioned against in­ter­pret­ing them as a ma­jor set­back for Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

She said the re­sults could lim­it the pres­i­dent’s in­flu­ence over do­mes­tic is­sues, par­tic­u­lar­ly bud­get and fund­ing mat­ters, but were un­like­ly to sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect his for­eign pol­i­cy agen­da.

“Know­ing Pres­i­dent Trump, I don’t think much change in his lead­er­ship style,” Ram­per­sad said, adding that he was like­ly to re­ly more on pres­i­den­tial ve­toes and de­crees.

She said the re­sults ap­peared to re­flect dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion, with some vot­ers ex­press­ing dis­con­tent with Trump per­son­al­ly.

Turn­ing to T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton, she said she did not ex­pect Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to change her po­si­tion of align­ment with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ram­per­sad ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ered its re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States im­por­tant to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests.

She al­so dis­cussed T&T’s re­cent vot­ing po­si­tions on in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court and Cu­ba.

De­scrib­ing ab­sten­tion as a mid­dle-ground po­si­tion, she said it sig­nalled that a coun­try was un­will­ing to vote in favour, al­though it was not an out­right re­jec­tion.