15 hours ago
6
DAREECE POLO
Senior Reporter
As questions persist over Trinidad and Tobago’s strained relationship with Caricom, political scientists are divided on whether the country’s recent election to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will influence Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s decision to personally attend and lead the national delegation to the 51st Heads of Government Meeting in St Lucia in two weeks.
Caricom leaders are scheduled to meet from July 5 to 8 under the leadership of incoming chair and St Lucia Prime Minister Philip J Pierre.
Earlier this month, on June 3, Caricom member states joined 181 of 191 United Nations members in backing T&T’s bid for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2027 to 2028 term.
However, political scientist Dr Bishnu Ragoonath does not believe this development will weigh heavily on the Prime Minister’s decision.
“T&T has already won the seat, and the point about this is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that anybody else could block T&T at this point in time. What, however, T&T may want to demonstrate is that they are willing to embrace their Caricom brothers and sisters to represent the region at the UN Security Council.”
Similar views were expressed by political scientist Dr Indira Rampersad, who also believes Persad-Bissessar should attend the regional summit to help present a unified Caricom voice on the global stage.
“There’s always need for a joint platform in international organisations like the United Nations. So they should speak with a single voice as much as possible in the international arena,” she said.
“In as much as she’s now part of the UN Security Council, regional security concerns should be both in the regional and international agenda. So there are concerns which transcend the region into the international arena, and those things should be aired at the summit,” she added.
Rampersad said the Prime Minister may also use the opportunity to restate her Government’s concerns regarding Caricom’s leadership.
“She has stated that she does not recognise the Secretary General. She should go and give her justification for that,” she stated.
Meanwhile, Dr Ragoonath also suggested the Prime Minister may use the summit to reopen discussions on the tenure of Caricom Secretary General Dr Carla Barnett, whose term the Government has indicated it will not recognise after its expiration in August. Barnett’s tenure was previously extended at the last Caricom Heads of Government Meeting in St Kitts and Nevis, a session which neither Persad-Bissessar nor Foreign and Caricom Affairs Minister Sean Sobers attended.
Dr Ragoonath said the presence of that issue on the summit agenda could shape T&T’s level of engagement.
He also criticised what he described as Caricom’s lack of cohesion, pointing to reports that Barbados and Guyana are set to allow passport-free travel between their countries using only national identification cards under a bilateral arrangement announced ahead of their 60th Independence anniversaries. The measure, due to take effect on July 1, will allow eligible citizens holding valid national ID cards to travel between the two countries without a passport.
He said such initiatives highlight the bloc’s uneven integration and argued that decisions of this nature should be implemented across Caricom rather than bilaterally, a point he suggested could be raised at the summit.
“That’s the problem with Caricom,” he said.
“If you go back to the Caricom Treaty of Chaguaramas, they will tell you that there must be unanimity in decisions. And that was one of the first things when we talked about the selection of Carla Barnett for her renewal; there was no unanimity.”
“Two, although they called for unanimity, it has now broken down to everybody doing things at their own time, at their own pace, and there’s no, again, consensus.”
Neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister of Foreign and Caricom Affairs have responded to Guardian Media’s questions on who will represent T&T at the three-day summit.
English (US) ·