Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Kamla Persaud-Bissessar’s ramblings at the CARICOM summit continue to be not only expected, but symptomatic of a deeper crisis affecting political leadership within this hemisphere, i.e., much of their political ramblings are overly concerned with an adept exposition and finger-pointing about what is perpetually ailing our regional integration movement. They are in the perpetual business of winning the movie of describing who or what is worse, not who or what is better.
I’ve often noted that it does not take much skill, intellectual or otherwise, to prescribe, although the Prime Minister continued to prescribe incorrectly. On top of the abovementioned, any intellectually bankrupt political leader can prescribe the destruction of systems that are “ailing”, suggesting, as Bob Marley did, that total destruction is the only solution.
But the more arduous and necessary political task is to demonstrate a willingness and propensity to act to improve political responses to the perennial challenges of our regional integration movement. Caribbean people continue to be overly tired of the soap opera and drama, both from the North and, clearly, in the South, now that it masquerades as serious political leadership, known best for how well they can complain rather than create or reform.
Put differently or even simply, the intellectually equipped political leader and stateswoman is the one who can demonstrate that they are in the business of proposing and enacting better solutions that can improve our movement, not further dismantle it. The aim of politicians must always be to translate the people’s agony into hope and promise through interventions, not to inflict more agony and despair than the people themselves.
Unfortunately, what we were treated to from Mrs Persad-Bissessar’s incoherent hogwash and quarrel with her colleagues, confirms the sequel is actually worse than the original, KBP 1.0, even if that one was problematic too. Certainly, we must return to the politics of better, as the lives and livelihoods of our people are at stake. What is even more worrying is our backward populace who, in our mas’ spirit, brand this politics as revolutionary, ignoring that Bob Marley’s real revolutionaries include those with the courage to create stronger institutions that are most just and most representative of the interests of the people.
From the outset, though, Mrs Persad-Bissessar showed a penchant for complaining, suggesting that the Secretary General’s alleged failure to respond to her letter about an alleged kidnapping is indicative of poor management, lax accountability, and a disregard for the opposition within the CARICOM structure. Instead, governance systems that make CARICOM decisions immediately binding, with appropriate sanctions for non-compliance, and an increasingly powerful centre, such as a CARICOM Commission with independent powers, may be the best bulwark against a lack of accountability, not the Prime Minister’s ramblings. In fact, now was the opportune moment for her to have suggested an official Parliamentary Opposition Caucus and Network that attends, deliberates and contributes towards regionalism, recognising their role in Westminster as governments in waiting. But the Prime Minister would never suggest the abovementioned, because, like the typical Prime Minister, she believes only in deepening democracy and reducing the ills of the Opposition to the extent she was the victim, not the perpetrator.
But one wonders whether the Prime Minister could have said the aforementioned, whether she ever supports such improvement, or whether she is more concerned about being part of the problem than the solution, serving as a mouthpiece for Washington.
While, problematic, if it all occurred, Mrs Persad-Bissessar could have utilised any other private approach to deal with this matter, in a diplomatic stateswomanlike way, particularly, when there exists non-state actors, investors, multilateral donors, and other senior government officials from other parts of the world within the meeting, looking on to our fissures, and in need of stable and unified regionalism for partnership.
And please do not be dismissive, because this is no different to you not quarrelling with your spouse when your neighbour who just moved in comes for a family dinner. It is undiplomatic, unclassy, and unbecoming. Clearly, the spirit of bacchanal may have influenced such behaviour.
But what was also worse from Mrs Persad-Bissessar is her continuous hyperbolic framing of an otherwise marginal issue, i.e., “Governments and their political parties actively involving themselves in the domestic and political affairs of member states to assist sister parties and then causing them to not be able to have regional cooperation with the political parties they worked against.” Continually pointing to that fact only shows and projects her own political immaturity, such that the basis of cooperation will hinge entirely on a campaign speech or assistance. On a laundry list of issues affecting CARICOM, such as Implementation Deficiencies, Outmoded Governance Systems, and Geopolitical Tensions that affect regionalism, among others, certainly, campaigning for another political party in the region does not rank highly. It is no secret that parties in the region, in some instances, share common origins, histories, and ideological convictions, such that they support one another at annual conferences, in electoral contests, and so on. In fact, attached is the market for political consultancies, which remains a limited pool, with expertise being shared, in tandem with our much-touted ‘freedom of movement of skillset’ across the region. This is no different from if any one of my colleagues who were in school with me at the UWI ran for electoral office tomorrow, and I was asked and also complied with their requests to endorse them on their platform. What is instructive, though, is that when de people fed up, there is no political leader, artist, consultant, or influencer from across the region who can save their political fate. Recent elections have demonstrated the folly of that thinking. If Prime Ministers cannot advance regionalism post-election defeats of their supported colleagues, in much the same way that we have our favourite and supported leaders regionally, then it is less about campaigning and more about the political immaturity of our leaders, to leave and respect the decisions of the referee, i.e., the people.
That the Prime Minister, due to her low political capital and attractiveness across the region, would not be invited to campaign for anyone else, but the Republicans in the US, should not be the basis of her objection. In fact, the Prime Minister is being disingenuous, given the ongoing evidence of her own party members being utilised in recent elections to campaign for others in the region. As such, she may be breaching her own rules.
Again, I painstakingly searched, and ask you to search, for the apparent lending of support to the Maduro-led regime by CARICOM Members, after threats to Guyana and Trinidad. What is ironic is that her own colleague, Irfaan Ali, whom she apparently is defending, has yet to articulate a similar position. Misery truly loves company, especially during the expression of “diversionary war”. ‘Cyah put yuh house in order, but wah rule the Community to divert from your own issues.’ But also, is it not CARICOM that organised the Argyle Summit, which sought to bring Venezuela and Guyana together to reconcile their differences? How does that occurrence demonstrate “lending of support”?
If the Prime Minister’s logic, though, is to be followed, would CARICOM Members not be within their own domestic right, as continually touted by her, to associate with whomsoever they please? Is that which is not good for the goose, not good for the gander? Instead, this gander is only satisfied not when other countries engage in foreign relations on their own terms, but when they follow the Trinidad position, without blinking the proverbial eye, as a continuation of Mrs Persad-Bissessar 1.0, suggesting tied aid, no different from that of imperialist powers. In fact, she suggests, Friends of all should be friends of those whom Trinidad and Tobago believes should be in the fete, while ill-advisably tying future policy positions to this current position. Imagine if our trade imbalance with Trinidad and Tobago prompted such a response, prompting our countries to disband future obligations and aspirations? Certainly, sober regionalism demands an understanding of and an improvement in the recognition that there will be winners and losers in regional integration. It does not mean that we must proverbially throw the baby out with the bathwater, but seek a more perfect union, also cognisant of our strength when we unite with one voice within the hemisphere as a bloc, in line with our obligation to coordinate on foreign policy.
By that calculus of Mrs Persad-Bissessar though, of a country’s determining its foreign and security policy, should it not also matter that through relations with Venezuela, states within the region have been able to receive as late as Hurricane Melisa Emergency Relief, Oil and energy on concessionary financial terms through the Petrocaribe programme that included flexible payment deals meant to ease energy costs across the region and to support economic stability, Development and Infrastructure support through ALBA et cetera. Of course, Cuba’s medical internationalism is well-rehearsed in the Caribbean. Truly, the saying that ungratefulness is worse than witchcraft is apt, to the extent that the Prime Minister of Trinidad remains deliberately impish, when choosing to ignore that foreign relations among and with states, particularly with Venezuela and also Cuba are not solely expressions and determinations of support or lack thereof of leadership and their validity, using our standards of Western liberal democracies, but based on people to people relationships, history and other considerations germane to the nation state. The Prime Minister’s bootlicking of empire has continued to cause her to be blinded by the combined effects of the US Sanctions on Cuba. In fact, a solution that could have been proffered by the Prime Minister is not only the lifting of the sanctions and blockade, but provision of humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people, from her bosses in Washington, recognising that if the people are truly under a dictatorship yearning for better, and we are best placed to support them, then we probably should not continually starve them, when they are not the cause of their “oppression”.
But, more ironically, one only has to assess the friends and financiers of the Persad-Bissessar-led regime, internationally, and their own human rights records as assessed by the United Nations, to see whether she talks the talk or walks the walk. In fact, one has to assess where new data would place their support for majority and minority rights, checks and balances, freedom of association, and so on, for the countries they align with. Moreover, the bombing of Caribbean citizens in the Caribbean without any of the principles aligned by the Prime Minister, domestic and international law that her country supports, is ironic and demonstrates her moral, legal and intellectual bankruptcy.
What is more concerning, though, is the ease with which the Prime Minister displayed reticence toward CARICOM approaches and principles, such as a zone of peace and crime as a public health issue, among others, while offering no appropriate reframing solutions. The proverbial devil’s advocate, even if they are not advocating for anything. The Caribbean, however, could still be a zone of peace, even with internal periods of insecurity, as it is both a vision and a diplomatic stance, which suggests, and also applies to Venezuela, that there should be no militarisation in the Caribbean. Ironically, the Caribbean, with its US support in the Caribbean Sea, clearly demonstrates that it truly does not believe in the Caribbean as a zone of peace. But her position of it being a Trinidad policy is untenable because of the consequences of the extra-judicial killings and militarisation on other neighbouring countries, as witnessed already. Hence why, regional cooperation and bargaining may have been the more appropriate solution. In fact, these siloed pictures of crime statistics, with an underlying inability to acknowledge the domestic circumstances that create crime and violence, and the US accountability due to importing firearms and Second Amendment rights, only deepen, not reduce, the crisis. It is in the same way that one can, myopically, without more suggestion, as she did, that managed migration in praxis is harmful to the public purse, without also upending the current regime. Certainly, I would want this dataset shown and analysed. Moreover, I would be interested in understanding how our Caribbean countries continually stand and should frame their foreign relations on the basis of Western liberal democratic norms, yet Mrs Persad-Bissessar made quite glib remarks about how citizens should not “badmouth the US” lest their visas, like the Antiguans’, be revoked. Does it mean that freedom is only free to sing the American tune?
What the Prime Minister does not realise, though, is that support for the policy position will benefit her only in the short term, and she is, unfortunately, a piece to be shifted and thrown off the board in the cycle of US gubernatorial or domestic politics to be played out in the midterms.
In the end, the Prime Minister’s intellectual bankruptcy was on full display, particularly as she has not recognised her naked and rabid support for imperialism, which will only provide her with the morsels of empire, and that she should commit her intellectual creativity to the recognition that both Trinidad’s self-interest and regional interests can coexist, instead of narrow nationalism. Certainly, the Prime Minister should listen to her nation’s own soca legends, who sang Famalay, suggesting that “When we roll we don’t roll alone.”
