Former foreign affairs minister Dr Amery Browne has raised questions about the Prime Minister’s declaration that she will be realigning Trinidad and Tobago’s foreign policy away from Caricom and towards new partnerships, he asked last night whether this “isolationist declaration” would result in a name change to the Ministry of Foreign and Caricom Affairs to remove any reference to Caricom.

Said Browne: “This Prime Minister has created major problems for T&T and is now blaming all and sundry except herself and her ministers. This is a tactic that is not unfamiliar to her.

“She has isolated the Government of Trinidad and Tobago from Caricom and openly rejected the concept of a Zone of Peace, whilst at the same time engaging in the most ill-advised and boisterous exchanges of rhetoric across the border. The Prime Minister cannot reasonably have expected the sensible and experienced leaders of Caricom to have joined her in such belligerence, and now she is seeking to mis-label their wisdom and good judgement as somehow being against T&T. She never sought or contributed to a Caricom consensus on the issue of the tension she has created with Venezuela because she did not see such as useful.