Caricom chairman: No reason to suspect T&T complicit in Maduro capture

Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Since the Unit­ed States op­er­a­tion that led to the ar­rest of Venezuela’s oust­ed pres­i­dent, Nicolás Maduro, Trinidad and To­ba­go has found it­self stand­ing apart from much of the Caribbean. The Gov­ern­ment’s pub­lic praise for the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary ac­tion against il­le­gal drug run­ning in the South­ern Caribbean and Venezuela — an ac­tion many in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts have ques­tioned — has fu­elled fresh ques­tions about T&T’s place with­in a frac­tured re­gion­al bloc strained by diplo­mat­ic ten­sion.

Those ques­tions have sharp­ened in the wake of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­scrip­tion of Cari­com as an “un­re­li­able part­ner”, a re­mark that re­ver­ber­at­ed across the re­gion. Against that back­drop, spec­u­la­tion mount­ed over whether T&T’s po­si­tion on Venezuela had placed it at odds with its Caribbean neigh­bours — or worse, whether it had qui­et­ly crossed a red line.

But Cari­com chair and St Kitts and Nevis Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ter­rance Drew has moved to rub­bish claims of re­gion­al sus­pi­cion, in­sist­ing there is no sug­ges­tion with­in the bloc that T&T was com­plic­it in Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s de­ten­tion by the US on Jan­u­ary 3.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Drew said T&T re­mains an im­por­tant Cari­com mem­ber and that no ac­cu­sa­tions have been lev­elled against it by fel­low states.

“I can say that that has not been a ques­tion that has arisen for dis­cus­sion among the bloc,” he said.

This coun­try’s For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge were adamant that T&T  played no role in the US op­er­a­tion to cap­ture Maduro.

Drew al­so de­fend­ed Cari­com’s ini­tial re­sponse to re­ports of Maduro’s ar­rest fol­low­ing a US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion in which at least 75 peo­ple were re­port­ed­ly killed. The Cari­com Bu­reau con­vened an ur­gent meet­ing in­volv­ing Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lu­cia, lat­er is­su­ing a state­ment reaf­firm­ing the bloc’s com­mit­ment to “the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of in­ter­na­tion­al law and mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism en­shrined in the UN Char­ter, in­clud­ing sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of States and re­spect for hu­man dig­ni­ty.”

No­tably, the state­ment stopped short of ex­plic­it­ly de­clar­ing the op­er­a­tion a breach of in­ter­na­tion­al law, in­stead re­it­er­at­ing calls for peace­ful di­a­logue through diplo­mat­ic chan­nels to safe­guard Venezuela’s sta­bil­i­ty, democ­ra­cy and pros­per­i­ty. The bloc al­so sig­nalled its will­ing­ness to sup­port such ef­forts.

That cau­tious tone drew sharp crit­i­cism from for­mer St Vin­cent and the Grenadines prime min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves, now op­po­si­tion leader, who de­scribed the re­sponse as in­ad­e­quate.

“This state­ment did not make a judge­ment of the ac­tion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. It reaf­firmed prin­ci­ples, which I think we all share, but it stopped short of mak­ing a judge­ment that this par­tic­u­lar act was a vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law. I would have wished if that as­sess­ment had been made,” Gon­salves said at a Jan­u­ary 5 me­dia con­fer­ence.

Drew, how­ev­er, stood firm, stress­ing that Cari­com op­er­ates by con­sen­sus.

“I will say clear­ly, I am not the prime min­is­ter of Cari­com, I’m not the pres­i­dent of Cari­com. I am the Chair of Cari­com, who at this time co­or­di­nates and helps to reach con­sen­sus as part of how we func­tion. And there­fore, that state­ment is a state­ment that was reached by con­sen­sus. And I stand by the con­sen­sus po­si­tion of Cari­com at this par­tic­u­lar time.”

Maduro’s cap­ture has been wide­ly in­ter­pret­ed as part of a broad­er push for regime change, though US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has framed Wash­ing­ton’s in­ter­est as be­ing root­ed in Venezuela’s oil re­serves. Asked whether Cari­com har­bours con­cerns about US in­ter­fer­ence in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of states, par­tic­u­lar­ly elec­tions, Drew said the is­sue has not arisen at the re­gion­al lev­el.

“From a Cari­com per­spec­tive, that has not been dis­cussed, that has not been brought up, but Cari­com is al­ways of the po­si­tion that democ­ra­cy should be pro­mot­ed, should be strength­ened, should be as­sist­ed where pos­si­ble. So, I would say the Cari­com po­si­tion would al­ways be that we would like to see de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments in coun­tries. That’s one of our prin­ci­ples. How­ev­er, we ad­here to the prin­ci­ple as Cari­com of non-in­ter­fer­ence”

Amid ris­ing rhetoric and strained diplo­ma­cy, some ob­servers have raised the spec­tre of a Brex­it-style rup­ture with­in Cari­com. Drew dis­missed the no­tion, say­ing he is not aware of any mem­ber state seek­ing to with­draw.

His com­ments come as an at­tempt to steady a bloc rat­tled by Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­marks, which drew pub­lic re­buke from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne. Browne ar­gued that Trinidad and To­ba­go has ben­e­fit­ed dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly from re­gion­al trade arrange­ments; a point that con­tin­ues to seethe with­in small­er economies.

Drew said the bloc’s eco­nom­ic, trade and in­sti­tu­tion­al ben­e­fits re­main far greater than its flaws, and urged lead­ers to see the cur­rent ten­sions as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for re­new­al rather than re­treat.

“Am I wor­ried that there’s a coun­try, a na­tion who at this time would want to pull out? I am not privy to that in­for­ma­tion, and I frankly don’t think so at this par­tic­u­lar time.”

“So I would say that at this time no­body is threat­en­ing to leave Cari­com, and while Cari­com is not per­fect, I want all of us to re­flect on how much we ben­e­fit from Cari­com, and some­times we ben­e­fit and we don’t even recog­nise that we are ben­e­fit­ing from Cari­com.”