DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Hours af­ter Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion at the Capi­tol in Wash­ing­ton yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar wast­ed no time in con­demn­ing the pre­vi­ous De­mo­c­ra­t­ic ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der Joe Biden, call­ing it a “dis­as­ter” for the Amer­i­can peo­ple and the world.

De­vi­at­ing from her oth­er­wise con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage to the in­com­ing Pres­i­dent Trump, Per­sad-Bisses­sar made her feel­ings on the out­go­ing Biden’s tenure known.

“The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Unit­ed States has been a dis­as­ter for the Amer­i­can peo­ple and the world. They fo­cused on push­ing a woke, ex­treme left-wing agen­da that of­fend­ed ba­sic com­mon sense and moral­i­ty, over­turned the norms of civilised pub­lic life, dis­ori­ent­ed and mu­ti­lat­ed chil­dren, cen­sored and can­celled dis­sent­ing views, dis­par­aged re­li­gious and con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues, fu­elled wars around the world, weaponised the ju­di­cial sys­tem against po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and in­creased nepo­tism, cor­rup­tion, crime, pover­ty, home­less­ness, and wealth in­equal­i­ty,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in a state­ment.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Symon de No­bri­ga, took the Face­book, where he said, “As a re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go, I am yet again un­sur­prised by the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s lat­est, des­per­ate at­tempt to scrounge a mod­icum of rel­e­vance in the pub­lic do­main.

“Her lat­est me­dia re­lease on­ly serves to un­der­score the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of main­tain­ing dig­ni­ty, deco­rum, and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in the pro­nounce­ments made by pub­lic and elect­ed of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader.

“The re­lease al­so rais­es se­ri­ous con­cerns about the tone and con­tent of such de­c­la­ra­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they in­volve in­ter­na­tion­al lead­ers and their pre­de­ces­sors.”

He added, “The role of the Op­po­si­tion, as a con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice, car­ries with it the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to rep­re­sent the in­ter­ests of all cit­i­zens with in­tegri­ty and ma­tu­ri­ty, avoid­ing di­vi­sive and in­flam­ma­to­ry rhetoric that may harm the im­age of Trinidad and To­ba­go on the glob­al stage. Pub­lic state­ments from high of­fice MUST re­flect the val­ues of re­spect, bal­ance, and diplo­ma­cy.”

Say­ing the “peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go should ex­pect their lead­ers, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, to en­gage with the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in a man­ner that up­lifts the na­tion’s stand­ing and pro­tects its in­ter­ests,” de No­bri­ga said, “In­stead of us­ing this oc­ca­sion to re­flect the stan­dards ex­pect­ed of a per­son in a lead­er­ship po­si­tion, the Op­po­si­tion Leader yet again chose her all too of­ten ap­proach which may gain her an­oth­er mo­ment in the spot­light but adds no val­ue to the cit­i­zens and fu­ture lead­ers of our coun­try.”

He added, “I con­grat­u­late Pres­i­dent Trump on his in­au­gu­ra­tion and thank out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Biden for his ser­vice. #love­wherey­oulive.”

Al­so con­tact­ed on the UNC leader’s com­ment last evening, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Shane Mo­hammed said, “The state­ments of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion con­grat­u­lat­ing Pres­i­dent Trump up­on his in­au­gu­ra­tion as the 47th US Pres­i­dent are in­dica­tive of the un­char­tered geo-po­lit­i­cal wa­ters that every sin­gle na­tion will be me­an­der­ing dur­ing his tenure.

“At the end of the day, Trinidad and To­ba­go has once be­fore found it­self on the black book of the US gov­ern­ment and there­fore I view the state­ments of the Op­po­si­tion Leader as part of the con­tin­gen­cies all lead­ers in the de­vel­op­ing world and glob­al south will have to adopt in or­der to have fruit­ful diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions.”

An­oth­er an­a­lyst, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia off the record, sug­gest­ed that the Op­po­si­tion Leader was seek­ing to draw a dis­tinc­tive line in the sand be­tween her Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

The an­a­lyst ex­plained that while the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has been sym­pa­thet­ic to the De­moc­rats, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was now align­ing her­self to the Re­pub­li­cans, re­gard­less of whether her com­ments are viewed as im­prop­er or not.

Trump praised for re­silience

Af­ter ex­press­ing her dis­ap­proval of Biden’s poli­cies, Per­sad-Bisses­sar turned her at­ten­tion to Trump and con­grat­u­lat­ed him on his his­toric in­au­gu­ra­tion. She praised the Pres­i­dent for his re­silience, un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment, and fight­ing spir­it.

“He has sur­vived as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempts, po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion, and years of per­son­al at­tacks, but he tri­umphed in the end,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so not­ed that Trump’s ex­ec­u­tive or­ders aligned with the promis­es made dur­ing his cam­paign, which played a ma­jor role in his elec­toral vic­to­ry. She ex­pressed op­ti­mism about the po­ten­tial changes to come un­der his lead­er­ship.

“I an­tic­i­pate sig­nif­i­cant and dra­mat­ic changes in in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion, diplo­ma­cy, for­eign af­fairs, and bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions,” she said.

“I look for­ward to the re­turn of mer­i­toc­ra­cy, ex­cel­lence, and in­tel­li­gence as a stan­dard cri­te­ri­on for ac­cess­ing equal op­por­tu­ni­ties. The peo­ples of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca have pro­found and es­sen­tial con­nec­tions at many lev­els, and our fu­tures are in­evitably in­ter­twined.”

Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion marked the start of his sec­ond term as US Pres­i­dent. Up­on tak­ing the oath of of­fice, Trump de­clared that “the gold­en age of Amer­i­ca be­gins now.”

Among his first ac­tions, Trump de­clared a “na­tion­al emer­gency” at the US-Mex­i­co bor­der, des­ig­nat­ed Mex­i­can drug car­tels as ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions, and moved to elim­i­nate gov­ern­ment di­ver­si­ty pro­grammes. Trump al­so re­vealed plans to de­clare a na­tion­al en­er­gy emer­gency to fa­cil­i­tate more drilling.

Look­ing ahead to Trump’s new term, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath not­ed that if Trump des­ig­nates Mex­i­can car­tels as ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions, there may be broad­er im­pli­ca­tions for in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, es­pe­cial­ly with Venezuela.

Not­ing that US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio had al­ready re­ferred to the Nico­las Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion as a “nar­co­traf­fick­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Ra­goonath warned that a shift in US pol­i­cy could im­pact Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ac­cess to Venezue­lan re­sources, in­clud­ing the Drag­on Gas project.

“If Trump is go­ing to roll back on those Biden poli­cies... Well, then, we have to be con­cerned as to whether or not the li­cences that we have right now, that al­low us to deal with Venezuela and get Drag­on Gas in­to our sys­tem, may very well be re­viewed and can­celled if that is what Trump and they be­lieve,” Ra­goonath said.

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs al­so raised con­cerns over Trump’s pro­posed na­tion­al en­er­gy emer­gency, which she be­lieves could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact T&T.

“Cer­tain­ly, we’re like­ly to see de­pressed en­er­gy prices im­pact­ing on coun­tries like Trinidad and To­ba­go that are net ex­porters. Our Caribbean neigh­bours that im­port fu­el are like­ly to wel­come low­er en­er­gy prices be­cause it means they may have to pay less for their im­port­ed fu­el,” she said.

How­ev­er, Attzs al­so point­ed out that a boom­ing US econ­o­my could ben­e­fit the Caribbean re­gion with an in­crease in tourism.

On Sun­day, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said the Gov­ern­ment was close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion and its de­vel­op­ments. Ef­forts to reach Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for com­ment on Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion re­mained un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.