One Opposition MP says the Prime Minister's address to the United Nations General Assemby was "ill-advised" as the Head of the Government made her administration's position clear that the Caribbean is not a zone of peace where illegal drugs and criminal gang violence are concerned.
00:00Opposition MP and former Foreign Affairs Minister Dr. Amy Brown's assessment of Prime Minister Kamala Pesabes's national statement to the United Nations General Assembly was in keeping with the opposition's objections to the government's recent foreign policy statements in support of the U.S. deployment of military elements in international waters near Venezuela as part of what the U.S. says is its war on drug cartels in the region.
00:24The Prime Minister's address at the U.N. General Assembly was a very poor reflection on Trinidad and Tobago. The speech, in terms of its content, did a grave disservice to the prestige and profile of our diplomatic standing in this region across the hemisphere and globally.
00:47The Prime Minister made clear her administration's position as she noted Trinidad and Tobago recorded 623 murders last year, of which many were gang-related.
00:57The notion that the Caribbean is a zone of peace has become a false ideal.
01:04The reality is, stop. No such peace exists today. For too many in our region, peace is not daily life, but an elusive promise, glimpsed and never grasped. In its absence, our citizens pay a terrible toll.
01:28Dr. Brown focused his statement on Saturday on that particular part of the Prime Minister's statement to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Friday.
01:37On the world stage, the Prime Minister betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of basic principles and concepts, such as the zone of peace.
01:49And she let down the country and all right-thinking people of the world by ignoring the plight of the Palestinian people, who today are suffering a genocide in Gaza, as was declared by the very United Nations that she was addressing.
02:08The opposition MP noted that the Prime Minister's statements were in contrast to those of other heads of government in CARICOM on several issues, including the U.S. military presence in the region and climate change.
02:20Overall, the Prime Minister's speech compares very poorly with the addresses delivered by her peers within CARICOM.
02:29She seemed overall quite unprepared and ill-advised, and her address squandered an important opportunity to convey to the world that we are a sovereign nation, which has a unique voice and real values to offer.
02:48Well, Trinidad and Tobago is far better than that.
02:53Prime Minister Passat beses a led a delegation in a meeting with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Saturday.
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