Ramsamooj: PM’s ‘Trump-like’ Caricom stance overplays its power

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must aban­don what he de­scribed as her “Trump-like” and ego­tis­ti­cal ap­proach to Cari­com and ac­cept that Trinidad and To­ba­go is no longer the re­gion­al su­per­pow­er it once was.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Ram­samooj ar­gued that CARI­COM can ad­just its bud­get with­out Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port, warn­ing that it is this coun­try that stands to lose more if the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to widen the rift with the re­gion­al bloc.

Ad­dress­ing the cur­rent im­passe be­tween the T&T Gov­ern­ment and CARI­COM over the han­dling of the elec­tion of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett, Ram­samooj said threat­en­ing to with­draw fund­ing due to a dis­agree­ment is out of the Don­ald Trump play­book.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that the Prime Min­is­ter chose to adopt a Trump-like po­si­tion when it comes to in­sti­tu­tions of rais­ing the is­sue of mon­ey and rais­ing the is­sue of with­draw­ing those funds,” he posit­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, T&T con­tributes al­most $127 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to Cari­com.

How­ev­er, Ram­samooj said Cari­com will not crum­ble if that fi­nanc­ing is with­drawn.

“We must recog­nise that the Caribbean econ­o­my has changed, and peo­ple like Guyana and Suri­name and I dare­say oth­er small is­lands are hav­ing greater eco­nom­ic suc­cess than was pre­vi­ous­ly held when you had these fi­nan­cial arrange­ments.”

He added, “So I don’t re­al­ly be­lieve Cari­com is go­ing to miss much of the 20%. They will make the ad­just­ments, and you have the econ­o­my, but can Trinidad af­ford any form of trade re­stric­tions when it comes to mak­ing their com­modi­ties ex­pen­sive?”

The po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst be­lieves that the gov­ern­ment is over­es­ti­mat­ing T&T’s strength.

“But the re­al­i­ty is you can no longer do that be­cause the oth­er el­e­ments of the Caribbean econ­o­my are grow­ing at a much stronger rate. Guyana is ba­si­cal­ly run­ning at about 8% min­i­mum. Suri­name is go­ing to quick­ly catch up to that. So we are no longer the pow­er­house.”

He said if T&T’s gov­ern­ment can­not af­ford to con­tin­ue pay­ing its share to Cari­com due to in­ter­nal rev­enue is­sues, then it should just so.

“This no­tion about Trinida­di­ans be­liev­ing that they are the eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, you used to be the eco­nom­ic pow­er­house. And there­fore, if you’re say­ing you want to re­duce your ex­pen­di­ture in Cari­com be­cause your econ­o­my can­not af­ford it, then sim­ply say so. But don’t look for an ex­cuse”

Ram­samooj un­der­scored that the en­tire fall­out with Cari­com is to, “demon­strate a po­lit­i­cal ego that is larg­er than life, but short in re­al­i­ty.”

“We must al­so recog­nise that there are a num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al po­si­tions, one of which I be­lieve Trinidad is look­ing to ac­quire and would re­quire Cari­com’s sup­port. So the endgame per­haps will be one to use per­ceived in­flu­ence to get the way that is favourable to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Ram­samooj is con­cerned that the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion is seek­ing to turn this coun­try in­to an­oth­er state with­in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

“Be­cause that’s what is com­ing over. That we want to af­fix our­selves to Unit­ed States, lose our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty, lose our sense of pride in our peo­ple and our econ­o­my by say­ing we have to go cap in hand, beg­ging, fol­low­ing the pol­i­cy of Don­ald Trump? Not the Unit­ed States of Don­ald Trump. It’s a Trump­ism that she is at­tempt­ing to prac­tise in the re­gion.”