Abdulah tells Govt: No need to escalate tensions with Venezuela

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), David Ab­du­lah, has crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of re­cent al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing Venezuela, urg­ing a mea­sured re­sponse ground­ed in diplo­ma­cy rather than spec­u­la­tion.

Speak­ing at a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ab­du­lah said the Gov­ern­ment should have re­spond­ed more cau­tious­ly to Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s claims, rather than es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions through re­ac­tionary state­ments.

“Rather than have, you know, state­ments that go back­wards and for­wards, ratch­et­ing up the tem­per­a­tures, what ought to have hap­pened is ac­tu­al­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go, af­ter the first state­ment by Pres­i­dent Maduro, should sim­ply have said, ‘We have not­ed that state­ment and we are now seek­ing to get in­for­ma­tion from Venezuela about this in­ci­dent that they have re­port­ed,’” Ab­du­lah said.

He re­ject­ed the gov­ern­ment’s re­liance on what he de­scribed as an un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claim. “The sug­ges­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go had no ev­i­dence of any­thing is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the best foun­da­tion on which to rest your case,” he warned.

Ab­du­lah ar­gued that the porous na­ture of the coun­try’s bor­ders means lo­cal au­thor­i­ties of­ten lack di­rect ev­i­dence of unau­tho­rised move­ment, whether by na­tion­als or for­eign­ers, in­clud­ing Colom­bians. He de­scribed the gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach as flawed, say­ing, “That foun­da­tion was not a good foun­da­tion.”

In­stead, he called for Gov­ern­ment to en­gage Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties di­rect­ly to un­der­stand the full con­text of the re­port­ed in­ci­dent. “The bet­ter ap­proach would have been to get from the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties pre­cise­ly what they knew about the sit­u­a­tion… which would then have en­abled us, as Trinidad and To­ba­go, to make an ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse.”

Ab­du­lah al­so placed the con­tro­ver­sy with­in a broad­er geopo­lit­i­cal con­text, warn­ing that T&T must be aware of on­go­ing pow­er strug­gles in the hemi­sphere. “There is a con­stant glob­al or hemi­spher­ic geopol­i­tics at play,” he said. He urged vig­i­lance.

The diplo­mat­ic ten­sion be­tween the coun­tries arose ear­li­er this week when Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo al­leged on his pro­gramme Con El Ma­zo Dan­do that a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al, whom he named “Guis Kendell Jerome”, had been cap­tured while trav­el­ling to Venezuela with a group la­belled “ter­ror­ists” in an at­tempt to desta­bilise that coun­try’s gov­ern­ment.

Re­spond­ing to the claim at the post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing on Thurs­day, Sturge not­ed that his min­istry had ini­ti­at­ed a probe al­though pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that there was no ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate the al­le­ga­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so weighed in on the is­sue as she warned the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment that T&T was off-lim­its and that she would put the Coast Guard on alert to use dead­ly force if any ves­sel from that coun­try sought to ac­cess lo­cal wa­ters il­le­gal­ly.

Mean­while, the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce has re­newed its con­cern over the es­ca­lat­ing chal­lenges posed by the Venezue­lan is­sue, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ar­eas of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, and cit­i­zen wel­fare.

Cham­ber pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said, “Se­cur­ing our mar­itime bor­ders con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor chal­lenge, es­pe­cial­ly in the south­west­ern re­gion of Trinidad. Boats trav­el back and forth dai­ly, many un­de­tect­ed, mak­ing it vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to ful­ly mon­i­tor and man­age the move­ment of peo­ple and goods with the ex­ist­ing re­sources we have.”

Ma­haraj added that the ab­sence of a clear­ly de­fined mar­itime bound­ary be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela has fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed the sit­u­a­tion.

De­spite these mount­ing con­cerns, the Cham­ber main­tains that diplo­ma­cy must re­main the cor­ner­stone of T&T’s en­gage­ment with Venezuela.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has long main­tained a con­struc­tive re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela, and we must pre­serve that bond. There is still an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage Venezuela in mean­ing­ful di­a­logue, not just to ad­dress se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns but al­so to ex­plore eco­nom­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly around their gas re­serves, which could of­fer long-term ben­e­fits to our econ­o­my if re­spon­si­bly man­aged.”

—with re­port­ing by Shas­tri Boodan