Regional leaders push back against talk of Caricom split

sto­ries by Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Re­gion­al lead­ers di­rect­ly con­front­ed what they de­scribed as the per­cep­tion of a grow­ing “frac­ture” with­in the re­gion­al bloc dur­ing yes­ter­day’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com.

The most sig­nif­i­cant re­cent strain in­volves the re­gion’s re­sponse to Unit­ed States for­eign pol­i­cy un­der Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. In late 2025 and ear­ly 2026, the Unit­ed States in­creased mil­i­tary pres­sure on Venezuela, even­tu­al­ly re­sult­ing in the ouster of Nico­las Maduro.

While Trinidad and To­ba­go sup­port­ed the mil­i­tary ac­tion, Bar­ba­dos and oth­er mem­ber states have held firm to the bloc’s tra­di­tion­al ethos of non-in­ter­fer­ence and main­tain­ing the re­gion’s stance as a zone of peace. This pub­lic split in how to han­dle a neigh­bour as in­flu­en­tial as Venezuela has led many to be­lieve the bloc’s “col­lec­tive voice” is crack­ing.

How­ev­er, in ad­dress­ing Cari­com lead­ers yes­ter­day, out­go­ing chair and Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness in­sist­ed that the re­gion­al body re­mains strong and un­der­scored that uni­ty does not re­quire uni­for­mi­ty.

“Our treaty does not man­date a sin­gu­lar for­eign pol­i­cy or a supra­na­tion­al au­thor­i­ty. And be­cause we are sov­er­eign states, each ac­count­able to our own elec­torates, we will at times as­sess risks dif­fer­ent­ly, se­quence pri­or­i­ties dif­fer­ent­ly, or in­ter­pret geopo­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties dif­fer­ent­ly. That is not ev­i­dence of the weak­ness of our as­so­ci­a­tion. This is the nat­ur­al ex­pres­sion of sov­er­eign democ­ra­cies nav­i­gat­ing an in­creas­ing­ly tur­bu­lent glob­al en­vi­ron­ment,” Hol­ness said.

He added, “Too of­ten, dif­fer­ences in na­tion­al per­spec­tives are por­trayed as frac­tures threat­en­ing the re­gion­al project. I sub­mit that they are noth­ing of the sort. While there are un­doubt­ed­ly cir­cum­stances where one voice has and will work for us to great ef­fect glob­al­ly, vari­a­tions in na­tion­al per­spec­tives is not a li­a­bil­i­ty to be feared.”

Mean­while, new­ly elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Dr God­win Fri­day, ad­dressed the dif­fer­ing views shared by Caribbean lead­ers.

“Over the years, we have come to near break­ing points. Words have been ex­changed amongst lead­ers. Meet­ings have failed or even failed to take place be­cause of an in­abil­i­ty to agree on crit­i­cal mat­ters or a lack of will. And for that, we have been mocked at times as be­ing more Cari-gone than Cari-Com, yet here we are. Cari­com sur­vives and the spir­it of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion per­sists and in­deed grows.”

Prime Min­is­ter Fri­day added, “But now more than ever we are be­ing test­ed. We are chal­lenged from in­side and out. The world around us grows more per­ilous dai­ly. In­ter­na­tion­al rules and prac­tices that we have be­come used to over the years have changed in trou­bling ways that call up­on us to look to one an­oth­er for sup­port. Where we thought we could safe­ly re­ly on fa­mil­iar routes of the road, we must now tread cau­tious­ly and ma­noeu­vre as best we can to ad­vance our in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive in­ter­ests.”

Cur­rent Cari­com chair and St Kitts and Nevis PM Dr Ter­rance Drew con­ced­ed things were not all well at this point in time.

He said, “So the Caribbean at this time and Cari­com may be go­ing through chal­lenges and dif­fi­cul­ties, but I want to say one thing. At a time when it seems tough­est, when the seas seem rough, when those who are the crit­ics do their best in crit­i­cis­ing and sug­gest­ing that Cari­com has lost its way, to­day in St Kitts and Nevis, in our pres­ence, are all the lead­ers of Cari­com, and the last time we had all lead­ers in the same room was 10 years ago. So, there is op­por­tu­ni­ty in ad­ver­si­ty.”