What’s…Caricom for?

T&T’s Kamla Persad-Bissessar has upped the ante in signalling her disapproval of Caricom’s position on the US strategy towards Venezuela. She flatly announced, “I do not consider Caricom a reliable partner, and over the next couple of years there will be a significant realignment of our foreign policy. These changes are necessary for improving our economic and physical security… Because they chose Venezuela over Trinidad, and that is something we need to remember!!
Well, you can’t get any clearer than that, can you?? What’s important for us here in Mudland is the declaration that her country’s interests are paramount in its relationship with her neighbours. And that’s something we also ought to consider vis-à-vis our relationship with Caricom. Like us back in the day, T&T was one of the founding members of the free trade grouping Carifta in 1968 that emerged out of the debris of the Caribbean Federation that was foisted by the Brits – but from which we had stayed out.
Free trade among our countries – meaning no tariffs to encourage trade. They were following the example of the European countries that had formed the European Economic Community in 1957. But we took the lead in 173 when Carifta was morphed into Caricom in 1973, with T&T’s Eric Williams and Guyana’s Burnham insisting we were a “community” – with all the closeness that implied. The EEC became the European Union only in 1993!!
But as we saw in 2020, when Britain decided that the EU wasn’t best serving its interests – too many Europeans were taking advantage of its “free movement of peoples” clause to emigrate there – it simply exited!! It would seem Trinidad might be following suit!! – because Caricom just doesn’t get the threat Venezuela and its drug lords pose, having created a gang culture that’s ravaged the country in the last decades!!
We in Guyana also face a situation where most of Caricom don’t seem to appreciate the existential threat Venezuela under Mad Maduro poses to us!! Imagine Ralph Gonzalves of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and his band of brothers from Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia in the Venezuelan-led ALBA knocking glasses with the madman in August. They announced their “strongest and total support” cause he was facing a “brutal offensive of political and judicial persecution promoted by the United States”!!  And this was after Maduro had purported to annex two-thirds of our national territory!! They have their interests satisfied by Petrocaribe!!
We gotta watch out for ourselves to protect our interests! Very frankly, your Eyewitness doesn’t see why we should be expending our scarce political capital to maintain a relationship that just doesn’t do much for us.
We also need to cultivate new relationships!!

…with Melissa??
We should all breathe a collective sigh of relief that we were spared from the ravages of Melissa due to the fortuity of geography – which has us far outside the hurricane belt!! Of course, your Eyewitness mourns the loss of lives and damage to property, etc, that’s now slowly being tallied, and is happy we’re gonna be sending over sole relief items. But geography has also exposed us to another danger that can create even more devastation than any hurricane – the presence of Venezuela and its dictatorial ruler, who’s caused EIGHT MILLION citizens to flee across its borders.
As a result, with at most 800,000 citizens, we’ve had an influx of anywhere between 40,000 and 60,000 Venezuelan refugees – among whom are embedded terrorists who’re members of violent terrorist gangs!! We’ve got more examples than we need from countries far larger than ours – without even the example of T&T – about what these gangs can do!!
Look at the horrors wrought by the Tren de Aragua gang in the US!!

…for Parliament?
Two more days to P-Day!! Will it be like the cowboys of old entering their own saloon – with their eyes squinted and hands hovering over their holsters??
But for sure, there’s gonna be only one LOO left standing!!