DUSTUP OVER CARICOM
A week after Caribbean Community leaders and a string of special invitees from around the globe toasted the bloc’s 50 years as an integration movement, the prime minister of host nation Trinidad and its opposition leader and former prime minister are engaged in a simmering row over whether the bloc has achieved much during its lifetime.
Prime Minister Keith Rowley Monday urged fellow leaders to ignore former Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her rantings on CARICOM, calling her insincere and irresponsible as she had missed several important opportunities to advance the growth of CARICOM during her time as a one-term prime minister up to 2015.
Former Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. Associated Press / Ariana Cubillos, file
The opposition leader, hoping her United National Congress (UNC) party can return to office in general elections expected in 2025, complained about the costs of two regional summits in recent months hosted by Trinidad that she claimed cost taxpayers close to $5 million, contending that as “citizens of T&T, we must also question the value for money in hosting an event of this stature. As a region, we must work towards these costly meetings being more than mere celebrations. We must ensure that the outputs and deliberations benefit our nations and extend to future generations,” Persad-Bissessar said. “When our children and grandchildren celebrate the first century of the existence of CARICOM they must with pride enjoy the fruits of the advancements made by those before them. While there is much to be proud of, anyone with a clinical eye can observe that the regional movement suffers from an implementation deficit.”
Clearly rattled by her remarks, PM Rowley lashed back at her on his Facebook page, accusing her of seeking to dampen the current buoyant mood in CARICOM and attempting to “undermine the regional body. My advice to Trinidad and Tobago and the region is to please ignore her insincerity and let’s press on to another 50 years of progress led by those who believe in the boundless faith in our destiny as a country and as a united and ever more effective CARICOM.”
Listing her criticisms and alleged negative actions over the decades, Rowley said it was the UNC government that had refused to deal or treat with the Trinidad-based, umbrella Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and the administration that had messed up relations with Jamaica forcing him to take a delegation there to mend diplomatic fences as Jamaica had begun to boycott goods from Trinidad.
Persad-Bissesar also threw some shade at efforts to improve agricultural production and reduce the regional import bill in CARICOM as she questioned how much had been done in this area. A livid Rowley laid out a very current example, noting a shipment of 70,000 pounds of high quality rice seeds had just arrived from neighboring Guyana to spur rice production in Trinidad. “The rice, shade house, and shrimp projects are directly out of the CARICOM initiatives in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, involving the training and development of thousands of young people in many programs in both countries in an effort to reduce our food import bill by 25 per cent in the first instance. It also includes the production of tradeable volumes of corn and soya for animal feed requirements,” he said.
