Analysts: Quake aid opens door to mending T&T-Venezuela ties

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

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What be­gan as a ship­ment of food, med­i­cine and re­lief sup­plies to earth­quake-rav­aged Venezuela may have opened the door to re­pair­ing one of the re­gion’s most strained diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ships.

The hu­man­i­tar­i­an out­reach, launched af­ter the June 24 earth­quakes, re­sult­ed in an ex­change of let­ters be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Venezuela’s Act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, a rare mo­ment of en­gage­ment af­ter months of diplo­mat­ic ten­sion be­tween the two neigh­bours.

An­a­lysts say the cor­re­spon­dence does not rep­re­sent an im­me­di­ate re­set in re­la­tions, but it could cre­ate an op­por­tu­ni­ty for both gov­ern­ments to be­gin re­build­ing trust.

The ex­change rep­re­sents a no­table shift in tone af­ter re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries be­came in­creas­ing­ly strained fol­low­ing po­lit­i­cal dis­agree­ments in­volv­ing Venezuela’s for­mer pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, the Unit­ed States, and T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion.

Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly sub­se­quent­ly de­clared Per­sad-Bisses­sar per­sona non gra­ta, while ques­tions emerged over the fu­ture of cross-bor­der en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing the Drag­on and Lo­ran-Man­a­tee gas projects.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia that the hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­sponse cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for both coun­tries to move be­yond those dif­fer­ences.

“The coun­try has gone through tremen­dous suf­fer­ing as a re­sult of that earth­quake. One can­not con­tin­ue to har­bour griev­ances and ill will and so forth. One has to let by­gones be by­gones, and one has to try to patch up dif­fer­ences,” Gon­za­les said.

He said T&T had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­sist its clos­est neigh­bour, re­gard­less of the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

“I felt Trinidad had to make an ex­tra ef­fort, even if the Act­ing Pres­i­dent of Venezuela was not ex­press­ing her ap­pre­ci­a­tion of our ex­pres­sion of sol­i­dar­i­ty. I felt Trinidad had to go ahead and do some­thing.”

Gon­za­les be­lieves the ex­change of let­ters sug­gests re­la­tions may be mov­ing in a more pos­i­tive di­rec­tion, but said the next step would be for­mal en­gage­ment be­tween the two gov­ern­ments.

“It seems that maybe things may be evolv­ing, and they may be patch­ing up things now and they may be mov­ing for­ward. You can’t keep these con­flicts run­ning un­less there’s a lot at stake.”

He said an of­fi­cial meet­ing be­tween the two gov­ern­ments would be a clear­er in­di­ca­tion that the diplo­mat­ic open­ing is gen­uine.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed al­so views the hu­man­i­tar­i­an out­reach as an im­por­tant diplo­mat­ic sig­nal but said it re­flects T&T’s long­stand­ing for­eign pol­i­cy ap­proach rather than a dra­mat­ic change in pol­i­cy.

“It is the right thing to do. It is what is ex­pect­ed. It is ex­pect­ed for us to show up and to do what is right, and that is what is right,” Mo­hammed said.

While he does not be­lieve the diplo­mat­ic dis­pute has been re­solved, Mo­hammed said the cor­re­spon­dence demon­strates good­will.

“We have not closed the chap­ter. What we’ve done is we have opened the door in an at­tempt to re­solve all of the is­sues, and we have start­ed by show­ing good­will.”

He said the cur­rent cli­mate could pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­vis­it Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s per­sona non gra­ta des­ig­na­tion.