Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

There is still no of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion on whether the Prime Min­is­ter will at­tend next month’s Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said those de­tails are still be­ing worked out.

But in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts be­lieve the Prime Min­is­ter should make an ef­fort to at­tend.

Af­ter miss­ing the 49th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment held in Ja­maica in Ju­ly 2025, Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter if she will at­tend the 50th Cari­com meet­ing card­ed for Feb­ru­ary 24-27 in St Kitts and Nevis.

She re­spond­ed, “Sched­ul­ing is still be­ing worked out. No de­ci­sions have been made as of now.”

Mean­while, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers said, “The itin­er­ary is still be­ing worked out. We are cog­nisant of the fact that the Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing is go­ing to take place in St Kitts at the end of Feb­ru­ary. But there are still pro­ce­dures and doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the itin­er­ary that are still be­ing hashed out. When that is for­malised, then de­ci­sions will be made in terms of who the del­e­ga­tion would be.”

When asked how soon that in­for­ma­tion will be avail­able, Sobers said, “As soon as we work out the itin­er­ary...we will make the rel­e­vant an­nounce­ment. That process has start­ed since last year.”

At the last Cari­com meet­ing in Ja­maica, Sobers said the Prime Min­is­ter could not at­tend be­cause she was tend­ing to mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He did not spec­i­fy what those mat­ters were.

How­ev­er, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, an hon­orary se­nior fel­low of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at UWI St Au­gus­tine, be­lieves the Prime Min­is­ter should at­tend the meet­ing in Bas­seterre.

“I think she should go. I wasn’t pleased when she missed the last one be­cause we have an in­ter­est in Cari­com. We have cer­tain con­cerns in Cari­com. The OECS (Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States) coun­tries are rais­ing some mat­ters about us, and we need to be there for them. And now, if the sec­ond meet­ing comes and she doesn’t go, well, I mean it’s send­ing a kind of mes­sage to Cari­com, which is that she prob­a­bly doesn’t have much in­ter­est in it.”

Dr Gon­za­les added, “Now Er­ic Williams did miss a num­ber of meet­ings in Cari­com in the ear­ly stages. But ever since, I think the heads try to come to these meet­ings be­cause there are items on the agen­da which re­quire the heads to sit down and dis­cuss all those mat­ters, for ex­am­ple, with the Unit­ed States and with Venezuela and so forth.”

For­mer For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan says that while it may not be strict­ly nec­es­sary for the Prime Min­is­ter to at­tend in per­son, do­ing so would al­low her to meet face-to-face with what he de­scribed as her “ad­ver­saries.”

“I be­lieve that this meet­ing will, de­spite its for­mal agen­da, have to deal with the fu­ture of Cari­com. The PM has cho­sen to be bold and has put T&T first as her rea­son for her new for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tions and align­ment. While some may ar­gue that it is not nec­es­sary for her to fur­ther ex­plain her de­ci­sions, I be­lieve that fac­ing up to your ad­ver­saries will de­fine her lead­er­ship.”

How­ev­er, Dr Ram­bachan said the PM can al­so rep­re­sent the coun­try ad­e­quate­ly via a vir­tu­al plat­form.

“She can choose, as she re­cent­ly did, to par­tic­i­pate vir­tu­al­ly. Hav­ing tak­en the po­si­tion on the side of the US, which, as we know, was not sup­port­ed by the oth­er lead­ers of Cari­com, she can use this meet­ing to clear­ly and un­equiv­o­cal­ly state her po­si­tion.”

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been high­ly crit­i­cal of Cari­com, say­ing the re­gion­al body is “not a re­li­able part­ner at this time.”

She broke ranks with oth­er Cari­com lead­ers who des­ig­nat­ed the Caribbean a “Zone of Peace.” She ar­gued that this does not ap­ply to Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause the coun­try is “most hit” by nar­co-traf­fick­ing, gang vi­o­lence and high mur­der rates, ne­ces­si­tat­ing her sup­port for US naval as­sets in the re­gion.