PM, Opposition Leader clash over US military presence in T&T

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed con­cerns sur­round­ing the US-sup­plied radar sys­tem at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, say­ing on­ly the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), drug traf­fick­ers and vi­o­lent gangs are “ob­sessed” with the is­sue.

Her com­ments come amid grow­ing de­bate over the radar’s con­tin­ued use and ques­tions about whether US mil­i­tary per­son­nel are still in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “Law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have no dif­fi­cul­ty with an Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pres­ence.”

The is­sue resur­faced dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing when De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on us­ing the radar and re­fused to dis­close the num­ber of US per­son­nel in the coun­try, chal­leng­ing as­ser­tions that cit­i­zens had a right to such in­for­ma­tion.

“I will not dis­close the num­bers. That would be un­wise. I don’t think any­where that sort of in­for­ma­tion would be dis­closed be­cause that is not in the pub­lic in­ter­est. Un­less you can tell me how the pub­lic would be well served by know­ing that. Un­til you could jus­ti­fy that, I wouldn’t be pro­vid­ing that in­for­ma­tion,” Sturge told jour­nal­ists.

When pressed on whether cit­i­zens had a right to know, Sturge asked, “You have a right to know? You have a right to know? Where you get that right?”

Fram­ing the mat­ter as a prac­ti­cal se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ment rather than a sov­er­eign­ty is­sue, Sturge added: “Ok, it’s your coun­try. The fact that there are mil­i­tary per­son­nel here, does that take away from your sov­er­eign­ty? Or does it not add to your sov­er­eign­ty when the en­e­my would be per­sons, nar­co-traf­fick­ers, who we have not been able to con­tain over so many decades?”

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les in­sist­ed that the pub­lic “ab­solute­ly and def­i­nite­ly has the right to know” about the pres­ence of for­eign troops on lo­cal soil.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, Beck­les ac­cused Sturge of adopt­ing what she de­scribed as a “con­temp­tu­ous” and “ar­ro­gant dis­missal” of le­git­i­mate ques­tions about US mil­i­tary in­volve­ment in To­ba­go. She al­leged that Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the mat­ter re­flects au­thor­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies and un­der­mines de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Beck­les point­ed to the No­vem­ber 26, 2025, land­ing of a US mil­i­tary air­craft in To­ba­go, which she said oc­curred with­out pri­or pub­lic no­ti­fi­ca­tion. She said it was on­ly af­ter sus­tained pres­sure that con­fir­ma­tion emerged of US Marines be­ing de­ployed “to im­prove radar sur­veil­lance.”

She al­so cit­ed state­ments from the To­ba­go Chief Sec­re­tary in­di­cat­ing he was not con­sult­ed, de­scrib­ing the episode as a trou­bling break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween cen­tral gov­ern­ment and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that cer­tain op­er­a­tional de­tails may re­quire dis­cre­tion, Beck­les ar­gued that se­cre­cy and what she termed con­tra­dic­to­ry ex­pla­na­tions erode pub­lic trust and com­pro­mise na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty. She called on the Prime Min­is­ter to “come clean” about the na­ture, scope and over­sight of any US mil­i­tary pres­ence.

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah yes­ter­day called for “strate­gic bal­ance and in­sti­tu­tion­al ma­tu­ri­ty,” as de­bate in­ten­si­fies over the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued use of the radar sys­tem and its re­fusal to give in­for­ma­tion on the pos­si­ble pres­ence of US mil­i­tary per­son­nel in T&T.

Heer­ah ac­knowl­edged that Sturge re­tains the le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty to with­hold clas­si­fied op­er­a­tional de­tails.

“Sen­si­tive se­cu­ri­ty in­for­ma­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­lat­ing to radar ca­pa­bil­i­ty, tech­no­log­i­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, for­eign mil­i­tary co­op­er­a­tion, or the pres­ence of for­eign per­son­nel, can­not and should not be dis­closed reck­less­ly. The pro­tec­tion of state as­sets, in­tel­li­gence sys­tems, and strate­gic part­ner­ships is para­mount,” he said.

How­ev­er, Heer­ah stressed that this au­thor­i­ty ex­ists along­side what he de­scribed as a “par­al­lel re­spon­si­bil­i­ty” to main­tain pub­lic con­fi­dence.

“In de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties, par­tic­u­lar­ly small is­land de­vel­op­ing states with com­plex geopo­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties such as Trinidad and To­ba­go, pub­lic con­fi­dence in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty gov­er­nance is equal­ly crit­i­cal,” he said.

“When in­for­ma­tion is ab­sent, lim­it­ed, or per­ceived as eva­sive, a vac­u­um is cre­at­ed. That vac­u­um will in­evitably be filled, of­ten by spec­u­la­tion, mis­in­for­ma­tion, unau­then­ti­cat­ed sources, or sen­sa­tion­al nar­ra­tives.”

Heer­ah was care­ful to dis­tin­guish trans­paren­cy from dis­clo­sure of clas­si­fied da­ta.

“Trans­paren­cy does not mean dis­clos­ing clas­si­fied op­er­a­tional de­tails,” he not­ed.

In­stead, he ad­vo­cat­ed for a struc­tured strat­e­gy from the Min­istry of De­fence.

Re­gard­ing ques­tions of for­eign mil­i­tary pres­ence, Heer­ah said any dis­cus­sion must be han­dled with­in clear pa­ra­me­ters. He warned that am­bi­gu­i­ty pos­es the greater threat to sov­er­eign­ty.

“Na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty is not com­pro­mised by trans­paren­cy. It is com­pro­mised by am­bi­gu­i­ty.

“In the ab­sence of clear of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion, me­dia ac­tors may pur­sue al­ter­na­tive sources, some­times ir­re­spon­si­bly. This risks reck­less jour­nal­ism, sen­sa­tion­al­ism, and the politi­ci­sa­tion of le­git­i­mate se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion. Once pub­lic trust is erod­ed, it be­comes far more dif­fi­cult to re­store,” he said.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad of­fered a more cau­tious per­spec­tive, say­ing the pres­ence of US per­son­nel could be jus­ti­fied de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances.

“US per­son­nel may be present in Trinidad and To­ba­go for a num­ber of rea­sons, many of which could be quite le­git­i­mate rea­sons,” Seep­er­sad said.

“Now, of course, I’m not sure what the rea­sons are, but the thing is, not all rea­sons can be made pub­lic, de­pend­ing on the rea­sons. Some of them are suit­able to be shared with the pub­lic, some of them may not be suit­able for shar­ing with the pub­lic.”

He added that with­out know­ing the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of any US mil­i­tary pres­ence, it is dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine the ap­pro­pri­ate lev­el of trans­paren­cy.

“So, in the ab­sence of know­ing the rea­sons why US mil­i­tary is ac­tu­al­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it’s dif­fi­cult for me to say whether or not there is a need for trans­paren­cy.”