Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, delivered a blistering rebuke of how unity is exercised within CARICOM, as she spoke directly to her fellow Heads of Government at the opening of their 50th Regular Meeting in St. Kitts.
Persad-Bissessar said CARICOM’s position when two of its members were under sustained attack by Venezuela must be noted.
She said despite repeated threats by Venezuela against Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, CARICOM stayed silent and did not come to the defence of the two countries.
CARICOM, last year issued a number of statements calling for the region to remain a zone of peace and reaffirm its support for Guyana in the border controversy with Venezuela.
“So how can CARICOM be a zone of peace when that regime was threatening violence to two member states, there was no voice from CARICOM, we were talking about a zone of peace and in my respectful view my country is not a zone of peace,” Persaud Bissessar noted.
She reminded that when threats were heightened against Guyana, she openly came to the country’s defence saying that Trinidad and Tobago would intervene should Guyana come under attack from Venezuela.
“Because of the unreliability of CARICOM in the above-mentioned situation of T&T and Guyana, we cannot bind ourselves to the same political ideologies, the same foreign issues and security policies of the entire CARICOM,” Persad-Bissessar stated.
Trinidad and Tobago has backed the United States military presence in the region, when most CARICOM leaders called for the Region to remain a zone of peace.
She had denied that Trinidad and Tobago played a role in the capturing of Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, but welcomed his arrest. At the summit, she accused him of killing and imprisoning thousands of persons in the name of politics.
Among other things, she argued that the high-crime rate in her country was due to drug-running and gangs, which she noted were fueled by Venezuela. She said many of the other CARICOM Heads may not understand the realities that her country has been facing.
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