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Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is de­scrib­ing Sun­day’s vig­il for peace, which the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) pub­licly sup­port­ed, as a “dis­mal fail­ure.”

On Sun­day, over 200 peo­ple gath­ered at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, call­ing on the Caribbean re­gion to re­main a zone of peace and de­nounc­ing the mil­i­tary build-up as ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela es­ca­lat­ed. The event, themed Be­cause No­body Wins a War, was or­gan­ised by a coali­tion of civ­il so­ci­ety groups, in­clud­ing the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions.

While JTUM leader An­cel Ro­get did not at­tend, the union sup­port­ed the event and, last Fri­day, is­sued a state­ment call­ing for the Caribbean to main­tain its peace­ful po­si­tion. JTUM stressed that any form of mil­i­tary con­flict in the Caribbean would have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for Caribbean cit­i­zens and could set T&T back “many decades.”