CARIBBEAN-PM Drew is confident that all leaders will attend next week’s CARICOM summit.

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, CMC – Caribbean Community (CARICOM) chairman, Prime Minister Dr. Terrance Drew, says he expects all regional leaders to attend the upcoming CARICOM summit to be held here later this month.

Drew, who is also the Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, told a news conference that he would be travelling to the Bahamas and Jamaica on Wednesday before meeting with the leaders of Guyana and Suriname as part of his initiative to meet “eye-ball to eye-ball’ with the leaders ahead of the February 24-27 summit.

“I see some people suggest that I should have a Zoom meeting. This is not the time for a Zoom meeting. This is serious business. This is the time that leaders sit in a room, close the door, and have frank eye-to-eye, face-to-face discussions ahead of the 50th regular meeting so that, in a sense, we can put CARICOM on the best footing,” Drew told reporters.

“We have been having these discussions, and I look forward to the outcome of the meeting and to the outcome from CARICOM,” he added. Watch video

The CARICOM chairman said he could say “all leaders thus far have committed” to attending the summit in the twin island Federation, adding “I think we have, if not 100 per cent, 95 per cent.

“And so I want to thank the leaders for really putting themselves forward to come to St. Kitts and Nevis, to come to Basseterre for that CARICOM 50th regular meeting”.

The summit will be the first since Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar had been critical of the regional integration movement following her country’s support for the United States war on drugs in the Caribbean.

Last December, Persad-Bissessar said the regional organisation was “not a reliable partner at this time” and that every sovereign state must be prepared to accept the consequences of its foreign and domestic policy choices as she defended the United States’ announcement of partial entry restrictions on nationals of Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica.

“CARICOM cannot continue to operate in this dysfunctional and self-destructive manner,” Persad-Bissessar said, highlighting what she described as poor management, lax accountability, factional divisions, destabilising policies, and inappropriate meddling in domestic politics by some member states.

She also said that the organisation’s support for the then Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela, which has been accused of human rights violations and threats against CARICOM members, further undermines its credibility.

But before she met with Prime Minister Drew at the end of last month, she told Parliament that while CARICOM is in “urgent need of some transformation,” the twin island republic “attaches great importance to our country’s long-standing relationship” with the 15-member regional integration movement.

“So, CARICOM, Trinidad and Tobago, we stand as one of the largest contributors, and we remain highly invested in CARICOM.

“We remain highly invested in the region’s success and our commitment to regional growth and development. As a government, we share the warm sentiments expressed by Prime Minister Drew, in his New Year’s message to the Community upon assuming chairmanship of CARICOM,” she said then.

Prime Minister Drew told reporters that he has taken a very “direct approach, a proactive approach, an approach that is based on hope, a pragmatic approach, and that could bring about results.

“I want to thank all the fellow leaders within the region and those in CARICOM for their strong support thus far. I have visited about five leaders. Tomorrow, I am travelling to the Bahamas to meet with the prime minister, then to Jamaica to meet with the prime minister there.

“I return and then fly down to Guyana and Suriname to meet with both presidents ahead of the 50th regular meeting of CARICOM,” he said, adding, “I want to thank my fellow heads for their strong support to this point.

“As I have said, I am not the prime minister of CARICOM, I am not the president of CARICOM. I am the chair of CARICOM at this time to seek to coordinate and bring consensus among the heads that form CARICOM”.

He said the summit here will allow for the regional leaders to ‘discuss any critical and pertinent issues with respect to the region,” he said, debunking the idea that his visit to the rgional countries are at a cost, reminding journalists that he travels on the plane owned by the Barbados-based Regional Security System (RSS) to which all countries provide financial and other assistance.

“Being the head of CARICOM, I get the opportunity to use the RSS plane, which is a military plane, no luxury at all, to move around the region and to meet the leaders,” he added.