At the 50th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar delivered a emotionally charged address, suggesting partisan conduct within the regional body, using her own experience as Opposition Leader as a stark example.
Addressing fellow leaders in Basseterre, St Kitts and Nevis, Persad-Bissessar spoke about a deeply unsettling episode in October 2022 when a Trinidad and Tobago citizen was allegedly kidnapped while in another CARICOM state and returned to Trinidad. The PM stressing that the country’s Supreme Court had ruled that the individual had indeed been kidnapped. She related that the man had been placed in handcuffs, transported to the airport and flown back to Trinidad, reportedly on an Regional Security System (RSS) aircraft.
But while the episode itself was alarming, Persad-Bissessar made clear that her sharpest criticism was reserved for what she described as silence from the regional body.
“Then I was Opposition Leader. I wrote to the CARICOM Secretariat. I wrote to the secretariat of the CARICOM asking what happened. How could you have facilitated kidnapping of a T&T citizen. Please let us know what was happening and how it happened. To date – that was 2022 – I have not had a response from the secretariat,” the PM stressed.
She added, “So I say to CARICOM: that response [rather], non-response, may be the result of poor management, lacks accountability or most concerning that one ceases to be recognized by the secretariat as a member citizen of CARICOM when not in government.”
Persad-Bissessar then issued a pointed warning to regional leaders that the institution “should be the voice for all, not just for the governing parties.”
“Yes we won our elections. Yes, we are all majority parties,” she said pointing into the crowd at her fellow leaders.
“But we were all in opposition once and we may all be in opposition again.”
Persad-Bissessar did not stop there. She broadened her critique to what she described as political interference among member states, chastising governments that dispatch party operatives across borders during election campaigns.
“CARICOM governments and their political parties who actively involve themselves in the domestic and political affairs of member states… cannot then expect that when we come together that we must hug up each other,” she said. In a remark that underscored her personal hurt, she added, “I’m sorry I have to share this but it hurt me a lot when I saw it transpire.”
