Farley’s support for US radar conditional

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he would “mash up” the radar in To­ba­go him­self if he had in­for­ma­tion it was used to as­sist the Unit­ed States in at­tack­ing Venezuela and oust­ing Nico­las Maduro.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day, as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions about the ar­rest of the now-de­posed Maduro and the airstrikes that ac­com­pa­nied the ex­tra­or­di­nary US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion or­dered by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump last Sat­ur­day.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view with To­ba­go Chan­nel 5, Au­gus­tine, who heads the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), said in ret­ro­spect, he was hap­py he main­tained To­ba­go’s neu­tral­i­ty in the im­passe be­tween the US and Venezuela.

“I ac­tu­al­ly don’t think To­ba­go should be pick­ing ei­ther side in this bat­tle. Most peo­ple don’t un­der­stand how in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions work, in par­tic­u­lar how in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions to­day works, vast­ly dif­fer­ent from how it worked a decade or two decades ago. We live in a world that re­al­ly and tru­ly doesn’t see small is­lands. We are easy to be bull­dozed and I don’t know that we, as a small is­land, should be get­ting in­to a fight be­tween a gi­ant and a wannabe gi­ant, so that’s re­al­ly not our busi­ness,” Au­gus­tine said.

Au­gus­tine was pressed on his claim of neu­tral­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that To­ba­go hosts a US mil­i­tary radar in­stal­la­tion and what ap­pears to be a small US mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ty ad­ja­cent to it.

How­ev­er, he main­tained that while the radar was in­stalled with­out the THA’s buy-in or ap­proval, no at­tack against Venezuela was launched from To­ba­go. As such, he said the is­land’s cit­i­zens have noth­ing to wor­ry about as it per­tains to any reprisal at­tacks.

“I have said that con­sis­tent­ly to To­bag­o­ni­ans, that I would be the first out there to cry foul, to even breach the law my­self, and go down there and mash up the radar my­self, if it is I be­lieve that it was the in­tent of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment to use To­ba­go soil or To­ba­go wa­ters to make a strike against Venezuela.”

The Chief Sec­re­tary added that the strike against Venezuela hap­pened with­out the US need­ing as­sis­tance from To­ba­go.

Au­gus­tine al­so asked where the voice of for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was now that Maduro has been ar­rest­ed. He said he not­ed that the charges al­lege some “Caribbean politi­cians” were com­plic­it in pro­tect­ing co­caine traf­fick­ers and ben­e­fit­ed fi­nan­cial­ly from that arrange­ment.

“Now I must ask a ques­tion, which is how come the for­mer, for­mer and all those that were jump­ing out ahead of the Op­po­si­tion Leader to have press con­fer­ences, why are we not hear­ing press con­fer­ences from them? We see press con­fer­ences al­most every day talk­ing about the is­sue. Why have we not heard a sin­gle state­ment? Again, that is why I am very con­fi­dent that I took the wis­est de­ci­sion of tak­ing a po­si­tion of neu­tral­i­ty.”

Turn­ing to Cari­com’s lead­ers, Au­gus­tine said, “Look at all the Caribbean lead­ers now, gen­u­flect­ing, look at those who were very vo­cif­er­ous na­tion­al­ly, who now just qui­et, no press con­fer­ences and that’s be­cause the thing has tak­en a turn that they did not ex­pect it to take.”

He added, “Peo­ple who were play­ing bad and were mouthing off, they’re now say­ing, okay, we will ac­cept de­por­tees from your coun­try. For ex­am­ple, Do­mini­ca and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. We’re see­ing a much more mea­sured state­ment from Miss Mot­t­ley out of Bar­ba­dos. Why? Be­cause we now find our­selves in a po­si­tion where the Unit­ed States just sim­ply went and take out, in three hours, take out the leader of a coun­try who were huff­ing and puff­ing and has said pub­licly and said to the world, we now in charge of that coun­try.”

Au­gus­tine did of­fer some ad­vice to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“Al­ways mea­sure the ex­ter­nal help with al­so pro­tect­ing the sov­er­eign­ty of our space. But again, in con­text, the Prime Min­is­ter would have more in­for­ma­tion than I have. Dr Row­ley, when he was prime min­is­ter, he said that the head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil will have in­for­ma­tion that the or­di­nary man does not have. In this con­text, I’m very much an or­di­nary man.”