CARICOM’s Anti-Trump Protest Cost the Region Its Integrity

By endorsing a corruption-tainted candidate for the OAS, Caribbean leaders chose politics over principle — and the region’s citizens will pay the price

Georgetown, Guyana — May 2026

There is a particular kind of that flourishes in the Caribbean — the kind that dresses itself in the language of democracy and sovereignty while quietly betraying both. CARICOM leaders demonstrated this hypocrisy in full view of the hemisphere when they threw their collective weight behind Albert Ramdin as Secretary-General of the Organization of American States (OAS), a man trailing a cloud of serious corruption allegations from his own country, Suriname. They did so not because he was the best candidate for the hemisphere’s premier democratic body, but because he was not Donald Trump’s candidate.

The consequences of that choice deserve far more scrutiny than regional leaders are prepared to invite.

A Region Already Failing Its Citizens

The endorsement did not occur in a vacuum. Transparency International has documented what Caribbean citizens already know in their bones: CARICOM governments are failing them. Bribery significantly obstructs access to basic public services — health care, education, housing — with the heaviest burden falling on society’s most vulnerable. The International Corruption Perceptions Index records little meaningful progress in the region over the past decade. The private sector, too, has been indicted as a willing partner in this culture of corruption.

This is the context in which CARICOM leaders made their OAS decision: not as reformers seeking to clean up regional institutions, but as political actors calculating advantage. Their candidate of choice, Albert Ramdin, was not an antidote to the region’s corruption problem. He was, arguably, a symptom of it.

The Allegations Against Ramdin

During his five years as Suriname’s Foreign Minister, Ramdin accumulated a record that should have disqualified him from leading any institution charged with upholding democratic governance. Surinamese media and the country’s own Public Prosecution Service have documented his alleged involvement in multiple corruption scandals. The most damaging centres on his relationship with Xaviera Jessurun, who has since become an advisor in his OAS office.

Jessurun has been formally designated as a suspect by Suriname’s Attorney General in connection with fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, and forgery. She has been summoned to appear in court. Yet rather than distance himself from a figure under active criminal investigation in his own country, Ramdin brought her to Washington as a senior advisor. And when Suriname’s Foreign Minister Melvin Bouva publicly revealed that Ramdin had improperly issued Jessurun a diplomatic passport — a passport that allowed her to travel to Washington while legal proceedings against her remained active in Suriname — the Caribbean leaders who had vouched for Ramdin said nothing.

Their silence was not accidental. It was a choice.

Politics Dressed as Principle

CARICOM’s defence of its endorsement has centred on the claim that its leaders were protecting the OAS from the influence of Donald Trump, whose preferred candidate was Rubén Ramírez Lezcano. There is no question that Trump’s interventions in hemispheric affairs warrant resistance. But resistance to one problematic actor cannot justify installing another. The OAS exists to defend democracy and human rights across the Americas. Its Secretary-General must be a figure of unimpeachable integrity — or at minimum, one who has not been linked by his own country’s law enforcement to abuse of office.

CARICOM performed no meaningful investigation into the allegations against Ramdin before casting its votes. Reports from Surinamese media were available. The Public Prosecution Service’s actions were a matter of public record. The Foreign Minister’s statement about the diplomatic passport was documented. The leaders of the region’s most corrupt member states simply looked away.

The Cost Borne by Ordinary People

Perhaps the most troubling dimension of this episode is what it reveals about where Caribbean leaders place their priorities. Former Surinamese President Santokhi, a close ally of Ramdin, reportedly directed millions of US dollars toward securing Ramdin’s OAS appointment — funds that could have been directed toward poverty reduction, crime prevention, healthcare, and education in one of the hemisphere’s poorest nations. Whether those reports can be fully verified, the pattern they describe is one the Caribbean knows well: public resources quietly redirected to serve elite political interests.

This is the same pattern Transparency International has catalogued across CARICOM for a decade. The bribery that blocks a mother from accessing her child’s medical records, the corruption that diverts school funds into private pockets, the culture that allows the powerful to obtain diplomatic passports for allies facing criminal prosecution — these are not separate phenomena. They are expressions of the same institutional rot.

Guyana Must Answer for Its Role

Guyana’s government has not been transparent with its citizens about its position on the Ramdin appointment. The 592 Guardian calls on the Ali administration to state clearly: did Guyana support Ramdin’s candidacy? If so, on what basis? What due diligence, if any, was conducted into the allegations against him? The Guyanese people, who are themselves living under the burden of inadequate public services and unresolved institutional corruption, deserve a direct answer.

A government that cannot answer those questions credibly has no standing to lecture its citizens about accountability.

Integrity Cannot Be An Afterthought

The OAS under Albert Ramdin’s leadership begins its tenure under a shadow that CARICOM itself helped cast. The institution’s credibility as a guardian of democratic norms will be tested from its first day. Whether Ramdin can overcome the allegations that followed him from Suriname to Washington remains to be seen. What is already clear is that the Caribbean leaders who installed him chose political expediency over rigorous scrutiny, and dressed that choice in the language of regional sovereignty and anti-imperialism.

The citizens of this region — the ones waiting in corrupt queues for public services, the ones watching their governments’ development budgets evaporate into patronage networks, the ones who never had millions of dollars to spend securing anyone’s appointment to anything — deserved better from their leaders. They deserved due diligence. They deserved transparency. They deserved the truth.

Instead, they got Albert Ramdin.

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𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙘, 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙨.