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For­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) vice chair­man Dr Amery Browne has warned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar against what he de­scribed as “slo­ga­neer­ing” in her for­eign pol­i­cy, rais­ing con­cerns about her rhetoric on re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs.

Browne crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­peat­ed calls to put Trinidad and To­ba­go first, ar­gu­ing that such rhetoric—which re­sem­bles US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Make Amer­i­ca Great Again cam­paign—risked un­der­min­ing the coun­try’s role in Cari­com and re­la­tions with states across the West­ern Hemi­sphere, par­tic­u­lar­ly Venezuela.

“Is that re­al­ly putting Trinidad and To­ba­go first?” he asked, be­fore cit­ing her past re­marks dur­ing a PNM me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.