PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Shad­ow Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs for the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Rod­ney Charles is ask­ing for a bit more trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing the de­ci­sion to grant a na­tion­al award to out­go­ing Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond.

Am­bas­sador Bond re­ceived a Hum­ming­bird Medal Gold in the sphere of Bi­lat­er­al and Diplo­mat­ic Re­la­tions at a spe­cial Na­tion­al Award cer­e­mo­ny on Fri­day. She is the first for­eign diplo­mat to be be­stowed such an ho­n­our from T&T.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Charles said he had not been giv­en an of­fi­cial rea­son for Bond’s award.

He said, “In a ful­ly trans­par­ent democ­ra­cy, of­fi­cial, com­pelling rea­sons would nor­mal­ly have been pro­vid­ed to avoid un­nec­es­sary spec­u­la­tion. This PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion has not yet learnt that we are a ma­tur­ing, ed­u­cat­ed, and po­lit­i­cal­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed democ­ra­cy re­quir­ing the fullest trans­paren­cy in mat­ters such as these.

“I can on­ly pre­sume, there­fore, that Am­bas­sador Bond played some im­por­tant, fa­cil­i­ta­tive role in T&T re­ceiv­ing a “bligh” to ac­cess Venezue­lan gas.”

In the award cer­e­mo­ny on Fri­day, the am­bas­sador list­ed some of her achieve­ments as strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives like the Drag­on Field li­cence as well as talks on re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty, cul­tur­al and ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­changes, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, fos­ter­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion on crit­i­cal is­sues like se­cu­ri­ty and cli­mate re­silience.

Be­fore Am­bas­sador Bond ar­rived in late 2022, her pre­de­ces­sor, the late Joseph Mon­del­lo had a strained re­la­tion­ship with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. Mon­del­lo, a Trump ap­pointee, raised con­cerns over this coun­try’s re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela dur­ing his Oc­to­ber 2018 to Jan­u­ary 2021 tenure.

Charles ques­tioned the tim­ing of the award, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en US Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump is set to be in­au­gu­rat­ed to­mor­row for his sec­ond term in of­fice.

“As a po­lit­i­cal ap­pointee of the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion, Am­bas­sador Bond must have had priv­i­leged ac­cess to the ex­ec­u­tive branch of­fi­cials and al­so to the in­flu­en­tial Black Cau­cus of the US Con­gress. And while ques­tions re­main about the cross-bor­der deals in the era of Trump, the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to give her the award notwith­stand­ing,” he said.

“Based on me­dia re­ports, she was very ac­tive in en­gag­ing T&T com­mu­ni­ties and NGOs, but that is nor­mal for past US (and oth­er res­i­dent) am­bas­sadors.”

There is no is­sue with the ho­n­our; take chill pill–Prof Knight

How­ev­er, Prof W Andy Knight, De­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence, Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta, and for­mer di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, UWI, felt there was no is­sue.

He said, “Diplo­mat­i­cal­ly, I don’t see any is­sue with this ho­n­our. In fact, I would ar­gue that it high­lights the strong re­la­tion­ship that the US and T&T had un­der the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion. Am­bas­sador Bond has worked to strength­en cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty, pro­mote sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth, and en­hance cli­mate re­silience in T&T.

“The T&T Gov­ern­ment sought to recog­nise and demon­strate ap­pre­ci­a­tion for what she has done as a US diplo­mat sta­tioned in T&T.”

The pro­fes­sor added, “I should point out that T&T is a sov­er­eign coun­try. Just be­cause there will be a change in gov­ern­ment in the US on Mon­day does not mean that the award­ing of the Hum­ming­bird Medal—one of the high­est ho­n­ours in T&T—to Am­bas­sador Bond is some­how a diplo­mat­ic faux pas. The fact that Am­bas­sador Bond, a Biden ap­pointee, is the first for­eign diplo­mat to re­ceive this award sug­gests that her work has had a pro­found im­pact on T&T, and she has been recog­nised for that fact. “

He said those ques­tion­ing the choice “should take a chill pill and re­flect on what it means for Trinidad to be an in­de­pen­dent sov­er­eign state.”

Prof Knight said, “The recog­ni­tion is sim­ply a tes­ta­ment to Am­bas­sador Bond’s ded­i­ca­tion and hard work, and I think that it serves as a pos­i­tive ex­am­ple of diplo­mat­ic co­op­er­a­tion be­tween de­mo­c­ra­t­ic na­tion-states—even when both coun­tries are go­ing through a pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion.”