By Ashford Peters
Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar Tuesday doubled down on her support for the Trump administration and the military strike in the Caribbean, even as she hammered fellow CARICOM for their silence when Venezuela threatened her country and Guyana, two member states.
“So we will want to have our foreign issues, policies, defend our sovereignty as we see best and so I come to the elephant that might be in the room, I come to the USA and the cooperation that we had with the USA,” she said as she addressed the official opening of the 50th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, taking place in St Kitts and Nevis until Friday.
Persad-Bissessar thanked President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US military “for standing firm against narco-trafficking, human and arms smuggling originating from Venezuela…
“That is what we were facing in Trinidad and Tobago,” Persad-Bissessar said.
She said some other member states do not have that level of illegal migration and crime, noting that in 2024, “crime was being treated as a public health gimmick…
“It was dubbed a public health issue. It’s not a public health issue. Because of the crime you’re not alive to get any public health; you’re dead. That’s what the crime is like,” Persad-Bissessar said.
“So don’t talk to me about a zone of peace,” Persad-Bissessar said, noting that Trinidad and Tobago, with 1.4 million people, recorded 623 murders in 2024, 40% of which were “gun-related, driven by narcotics, by firearms from Venezuela and guns coming out of Venezuela and mixing with guns in Trinidad”.
Persad-Bissessar said that with a change of government in 2025, a change of policy to treat with the drug cartels and the guns as violent terrorist organisations, and military action by the U.S. military in the Caribbean, “caused our murders rate to decrease by 42%.
“You know what that meant? There were 257 less murders in T&T. I can say thanks again to President Trump, and thanks again to Secretary Rubio — Marco Rubio; I thank them and the US military for the cooperation and what is shared with us for national security matters,” Persad-Bissessar told the opening ceremony.
“Maybe in your islands you don’t have the kind of crime we have. I know [Jamaica] Prime Minister [Andrew] Holness, we tried to pass the ZOSO Bill in Trinidad, we were not as supportive as you in the parliament, but I know you have done well with your murder rate,” she said.
“So, some of us, the crime is so bad I cannot depend on just my military, my protective services, and certainly from you in the CARICOM, many of you do not have military or large police services to help us down there.
“So again, I repeat, in Trinidad, there is a saying, ‘Who vex loss.’ But we gained. We gained from the help … that military help and I will welcome them again. So, we changed the policy and we were able to bring those murders down by 42%… that’s 257 less people who would have been dead had we not taken that course of action,” Persad-Bissessar said.
The Trinidad and Tobago prime minister said that “to partner with the US is not to undermine the Caribbean region, but to defend it.”
She said T&T will “continue to cooperate with the US in the best interest of our citizens to drive these civilizing and destructive forces out of our country, out of our region, and out of our hemisphere”.
Divided we stand, divided we fall, divided we will rise again. What A Caribbean….
I respect her views though not fully agreeing with all she has said. But Kamla, what do you have to say about the way Trump is treating Cuba? Does it bring pleasure to your heart to see innocent Cuban citizens, including children, suffer due to Trump’s evil sanctions? Do you think Trump really cares about you and Trinidad, or any other Caribbean country? Trump cares only about USA and he uses the Caribbean to his advantage to achieve his goals. Trump is very selfish!