Sobers assures T&T not leaving Commonwealth

The Gov­ern­ment has no in­ten­tion of with­draw­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go from the Com­mon­wealth de­spite Britain’s po­si­tion on repa­ra­tions for slav­ery, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers has said.

Sobers was re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to a sug­ges­tion by Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er and his­to­ri­an Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh that Trinidad and To­ba­go con­sid­er leav­ing the Com­mon­wealth as a show of dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the British Gov­ern­ment’s re­fusal to sup­port fi­nan­cial repa­ra­tions for its role in the transat­lantic slave trade.

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“I am quite cer­tain that Trinidad and To­ba­go has no in­ten­tion of pulling out of the Com­mon­wealth. The Com­mon­wealth is an ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly, just as we are part of Cari­com and part of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS). To pull out of the Com­mon­wealth, no, that’s not some­thing that we would con­sid­er at all,” Sobers said on the side­lines of the Trinidad and To­ba­go-Eu­ro­pean Union Part­ner­ship Di­a­logue at the Hilton Trinidad in St Ann’s.