Mickela writes open letter to Kamla on US-Venezuela tensions

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front po­lit­i­cal leader Mick­ela Pan­day has pressed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to clar­i­fy whether the State has con­crete plans to pro­tect cit­i­zens and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture if ten­sions es­ca­late be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

In an open let­ter shared on Face­book yes­ter­day, Pan­day said with­out seek­ing sen­si­tive na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty de­tails, the pub­lic is en­ti­tled to “ba­sic re­as­sur­ance” on how the Gov­ern­ment will han­dle any pos­si­ble fall­out.

She ques­tioned whether there is a plan in place should Trinidad and To­ba­go come un­der at­tack, and whether the Prime Min­is­ter can as­sure the coun­try it will be kept safe.

Pan­day al­so asked what arrange­ments ex­ist to pro­tect the na­tion af­ter any for­eign mil­i­tary as­sets even­tu­al­ly leave, warn­ing that re­peat­ed as­sur­ances with­out clear ex­pla­na­tions risk un­der­min­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence.

Pan­day said many cit­i­zens were un­set­tled by re­cent pub­lic re­marks from Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of In­te­ri­or, Jus­tice and Peace Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo and were seek­ing re­as­sur­ance on na­tion­al safe­ty, pre­pared­ness and trans­paren­cy. She ar­gued that while the Prime Min­is­ter’s as­sur­ance that Trinidad and To­ba­go is “not in­volved in the US block­ade against Venezuela” had been heard, it did not ad­dress deep­er con­cerns.

“What con­tin­ues to con­cern many cit­i­zens is not the rep­e­ti­tion of as­sur­ances, but the ab­sence of clear, cred­i­ble ex­pla­na­tions that ac­knowl­edge the wider re­gion­al and geopo­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties now con­fronting our coun­try,” Pan­day wrote.

She warned that pub­lic con­fi­dence erodes when in­for­ma­tion ap­pears “par­tial, de­layed or over­ly de­fen­sive,” and ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment has been suf­fi­cient­ly open about the na­ture and im­pli­ca­tions of co­op­er­a­tion with for­eign mil­i­tary and se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions.

“Slo­gans such as ‘T&T first’ can­not sub­sti­tute for forth­right lead­er­ship,” she wrote.

“Calm, clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion builds trust, and trust is es­sen­tial as our na­tion nav­i­gates an in­creas­ing­ly com­plex re­gion­al en­vi­ron­ment.”

Mes­sages to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for a com­ment on Pan­day’s state­ment went unan­swered yes­ter­day.