Ambassador produces proof of T&T’s UN vote on Palestine

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed Na­tions, Dr Neil Parsan, has re­ject­ed ac­cu­sa­tions that he mis­led the coun­try about its vote on a res­o­lu­tion con­cern­ing Pales­tine, pro­duc­ing an elec­tron­ic vot­ing re­ceipt as ev­i­dence that Trinidad and To­ba­go sup­port­ed the mea­sure.

Parsan in­sist­ed that T&T vot­ed in favour of the Sep­tem­ber 17 res­o­lu­tion al­low­ing Pales­tin­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ab­bas to ad­dress the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly vir­tu­al­ly, de­spite an of­fi­cial UN Dig­i­tal Li­brary record show­ing no vote record­ed for this coun­try.

The Am­bas­sador showed Guardian Me­dia an elec­tron­ic re­ceipt iden­ti­fy­ing T&T along­side the words “vote in favour of” the res­o­lu­tion ti­tled “Par­tic­i­pa­tion by the State of Pales­tine dur­ing the 81st ses­sion”.

He main­tained that the in­for­ma­tion pub­lished on the UN’s dig­i­tal por­tal was in­ac­cu­rate and said he would en­deav­our to have the record cor­rect­ed.

His re­sponse came af­ter Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor and for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of mis­lead­ing the pop­u­la­tion about Trinidad and To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the vote.

Dur­ing Mon­day night’s Sen­ate Bud­get de­bate, Browne said he had ex­am­ined the of­fi­cial UN Dig­i­tal Li­brary record and dis­cov­ered that while sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries were list­ed as vot­ing in favour of the res­o­lu­tion, this coun­try had no vote record­ed.

The res­o­lu­tion, which al­lowed Ab­bas to de­liv­er a vir­tu­al ad­dress to the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly’s high-lev­el de­bate af­ter the Unit­ed States barred him from trav­el­ling to New York, was adopt­ed by 152 votes in favour, three against and four ab­sten­tions.

Browne re­ferred to a Sep­tem­ber 22 Guardian Me­dia re­port in which Parsan had con­firmed T&T’s sup­port for the res­o­lu­tion.

He said he had ini­tial­ly wel­comed that po­si­tion, de­scrib­ing a vote in favour as a “sound and prin­ci­pled po­si­tion”.

How­ev­er, he told the Sen­ate that his sub­se­quent ex­am­i­na­tion of the UN’s of­fi­cial vot­ing record raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about the ac­cu­ra­cy of the Am­bas­sador’s ac­count.

“There is no vote record­ed at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly on a mat­ter as fun­da­men­tal as that when you have our na­tion’s am­bas­sador telling our so­ci­ety that we vot­ed in sup­port of the Pales­tine res­o­lu­tion,” Browne said.

He de­scribed the dis­crep­an­cy as “a red flag for the con­duct of our for­eign af­fairs” and ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to cor­rect what he be­lieved was a mis­lead­ing ac­count of the coun­try’s vot­ing po­si­tion.

“They have sat in si­lence while the pop­u­la­tion was be­ing mis­led,” Browne de­clared.

But Parsan main­tained that the coun­try had par­tic­i­pat­ed and vot­ed in favour, pre­sent­ing the elec­tron­ic re­ceipt to Guardian Me­dia to sup­port his ac­count.

The dis­pute al­so trig­gered a con­fronta­tion in the Sen­ate be­tween Browne and Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor David Nakhid, who chal­lenged the for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter’s claims.

Nakhid said he had ob­tained an elec­tron­ic del­e­gate record con­firm­ing that this coun­try had sup­port­ed the res­o­lu­tion.

He ac­cused Browne of mis­lead­ing the cham­ber and called on him to ac­knowl­edge that his claim was in­cor­rect.

How­ev­er, when Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark al­lowed Browne to re­spond, the Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor stood by his state­ments.