Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Hier 04:26

In Trump’s shadow

TO STUDY the Prime Minister is to confront a populist leader in the throes of alarming contradictions. At home, Kamla Persad-Bissessar seeks to bolster the criminal trial process and install a chancellor to ensure swift proceedings; abroad, she is gung-ho for the American military’s summary executions at sea, saying, “Kill them all violently.” At home, she grandly swears an oath on the Constitution; but abroad she has no qualms about supporting US military actions, which experts say violate both its domestic law and its international treaty obligations. At home, the Siparia MP presents a national budget that is all about “fairness” and caring for “the people” and issues Divali greetings containing platitudes to “the light of truth, justice, and compassion,” but abroad, she suggests, as she did in a media statement of August 23, that any citizen “engaged in or enabling criminal activity” should be worried. The deadly October 14 US strike, merely one in an ongoing series, on a boat off Venezuela, which has triggered fears that nationals were onboard, shatters Ms Persad-Bissessar’s sordid political double life, for the first time bringing home the calamitous implications of her reckless posturing. That Constitution which the PM swore her oath on in May at President’s House declares all citizens of this country are entitled to the right to life, liberty, and security of the person, and “the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law.” Yet, since reports emerged of fears that at least two nationals were killed in the strike, the Persad-Bissessar administration has shown no alacrity in addressing these rumours. The Homeland Security Minister, Roger Alexander, on October 17 facetiously asked family members to contact the police. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on October 19 insinuated that those involved in illegal activities “do so at their own peril.” Worse, at a lease ceremony on October 16, the PM ducked and ran from reporters citing, in an act of pure cynicism, the need to join a virtual Caricom meeting, after months of neglecting to attend such summits and denigrating the bloc’s position that the Caribbean should be a zone of peace. At that meeting, she reiterated her misguided opposition to that “ideal,” simultaneously cementing her false equivocation between misdemeanours and warfare and this country’s complete regional isolation. The Prime Minister’s publication of her meeting with US diplomats at her home on October 18 only deepens the sense of contempt, which now extends to fresh questions surrounding an unusual embassy alert issued to Americans on our soil. At home, the PM is all for talking about her perseverance and courage; but abroad, she is keen for the appeasement – even if possibly realised in citizens’ blood – of Donald Trump. The post In Trump’s shadow appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.