Farley: PM ‘has more balls’ than Caricom peers

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has praised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for hav­ing “more balls” than her male Cari­com coun­ter­parts, cit­ing her han­dling of re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments dis­cussed at last week’s Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis.

Speak­ing on Sun­day in his first brief­ing af­ter at­tend­ing the sum­mit, Au­gus­tine said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s analy­sis of events sur­round­ing Venezuela showed prag­ma­tism and a clear un­der­stand­ing of in­ter­na­tion­al pow­er dy­nam­ics.

Dur­ing her Feb­ru­ary 24 ad­dress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar crit­i­cised Cari­com for not de­fend­ing mem­ber states Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana when Venezuela was “threat­en­ing vi­o­lence” against them.

Re­flect­ing on these events, Au­gus­tine said: “Look­ing back now at the whole sit­u­a­tion and how it played it­self out, I don’t know if the radar was in To­ba­go or not that would stop the US from get­ting Maduro. I find we have glossed over the fact that Maduro was tak­en and those who were the strongest al­lies and sup­port­ers of Maduro, those who swore to pro­tect him, all of a sud­den they get qui­et.

“You see (act­ing Venezuela Pres­i­dent) Del­cy (Ro­driguez) chang­ing her tune and chang­ing her po­si­tion be­cause of US pow­er over her and Venezuela. We don’t un­der­stand the prag­ma­tism. It might just be the PM has more balls than all her male coun­ter­parts in the re­gion.”

Au­gus­tine was part of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s del­e­ga­tion at the Cari­com sum­mit, which al­so dis­cussed re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion and oth­er geopo­lit­i­cal chal­lenges fac­ing mem­ber states.