On July 4th, it will be fifty years since the Caricom was established. This joyful occasion falls on the same day as Trinidad and Tobago’s annual Caricom Heads of Government Meeting, which President Chandrikapersad Santokhi will attend on Sunday, July 2. The 50th anniversary of the regional organization, of which Suriname became a member in 1995, gives this gathering a unique aspect, according to Minister Albert Ramdin of Foreign Affairs, International Business, and International Cooperation (BIBIS).
The Caricom flag and the flag of each member nation were raised during the Flag Raising event, which took place in each member nation on June 30 as part of the celebration of “50 years of Caricom.” This was the situation at the Ministry of BIBIS in Suriname. Minister Ramdin claims that the gathering of heads of state and administration is about more than merely remembering the founding. There will also be discussion of a variety of important topics, such as the situation in Haiti, impending climate change and finance conferences, and the summit on new financial arrangements held in France.
The BIBIS minister announces that after the meeting in Trinidad he will again chair the Executive Council of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) to set out a number of lines. The minister will then pay an official visit to Venezuela. The subject of this visit is the reactivation of bilateral cooperation, which has been at a standstill for a long time.
The Caricom Heads of Government is one of the meetings in which President Santokhi will participate in the coming days. In his own country, as part of the celebration of 160 years of the abolition of slavery, the head of state receives a visit from the Aruban Deputy Prime Minister Ursell Arends and the Dutch Deputy Prime Minister, also Minister of Foreign Affairs Wopke Hoekstra, as representatives of the Dutch government. The president of Ghana, to whom an invitation was also sent, will no longer travel to Suriname.
