Gonzales urges PM to watch her language

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

In­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les says For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers’ re­cent meet­ing with his Venezue­lan coun­ter­part is an en­cour­ag­ing sign that re­la­tions be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela are be­gin­ning to im­prove, and he be­lieves a meet­ing be­tween the lead­ers of both coun­tries could even­tu­al­ly fol­low.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les is urg­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to adopt a more mea­sured ap­proach when com­ment­ing pub­licly on Venezuela, warn­ing that un­nec­es­sary crit­i­cism could un­der­mine ef­forts to re­build ties at a time when both coun­tries have shared in­ter­ests.

“Yes, it’s a pos­i­tive sign. I think they are try­ing to patch up re­la­tions,” Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“The Venezue­lans seem to de­sire to some­how re­pair the re­la­tion­ship, but they’re tak­ing it grad­u­al­ly over time.”

Sobers met with Venezue­lan For­eign Min­is­ter Félix Plasen­cia at Casa Amar­il­la, the head­quar­ters of Venezuela’s For­eign Min­istry in Cara­cas, for bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions yes­ter­day.

Gon­za­les be­lieves the en­gage­ment could lay the ground­work for talks be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez.

“Cer­tain­ly, I think a meet­ing at the top be­tween their pres­i­dent and our prime min­is­ter would be some­thing that we should be see­ing,” he said.

He not­ed that Ro­dríguez has al­ready held high-lev­el dis­cus­sions with oth­er Caribbean lead­ers and ar­gued that T&T has even stronger rea­sons to main­tain di­rect di­a­logue with Cara­cas.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, the ab­sence of a meet­ing be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ro­dríguez so far may in­di­cate lin­ger­ing re­sent­ment in Cara­cas stem­ming from pre­vi­ous diplo­mat­ic ten­sions.

“I think the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment still has some scars from what tran­spired be­fore. But they want to have some kind of bet­ter re­la­tion­ship with us,” he said.

“There’s some kind of heal­ing tak­ing place.”

Gon­za­les be­lieves the push to re­pair re­la­tions is dri­ven large­ly by mu­tu­al in­ter­ests rather than pres­sure from Wash­ing­ton.

He said both coun­tries face sev­er­al is­sues that re­quire co­op­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing en­er­gy, mi­gra­tion, hu­man traf­fick­ing, con­tra­band and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the Gulf of Paria.

“We have a lot more in com­mon and we have a lot more to do with Venezuela than Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos,” he said.

“We have the Gulf of Paria here with all the hu­man traf­fick­ing and the con­tra­band and all of that. And we need to work with the Venezue­lans to kind of con­trol what’s hap­pen­ing here.”

En­er­gy re­mains one of the strongest ar­eas for col­lab­o­ra­tion, Gon­za­les added.

He not­ed that Venezuela pos­sess­es vast nat­ur­al gas re­serves that it needs to mon­e­tise, while Trinidad and To­ba­go has the in­fra­struc­ture nec­es­sary to process ad­di­tion­al gas sup­plies.

“We are sit­ting right next to Venezuela. We have the in­fra­struc­ture. We have the com­pa­nies that can use the gas,” he said.

“It’s of mu­tu­al ben­e­fit.”

Gon­za­les said ge­og­ra­phy alone makes co­op­er­a­tion un­avoid­able and cau­tioned against al­low­ing po­lit­i­cal griev­ances to ob­struct prac­ti­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“We are neigh­bours and we are, in a sense, forced to work to­geth­er to deal with these prob­lems. You can’t solve it by your­selves,” he said.

“You can’t keep hold­ing on to griev­ances as a state be­cause even­tu­al­ly it may cut off your own nose.”

At the same time, he said the Prime Min­is­ter must avoid com­ments that could gen­er­ate fresh diplo­mat­ic ten­sions.

Point­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pre­vi­ous crit­i­cism of Ro­dríguez, Gon­za­les said such re­marks do lit­tle to ad­vance Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al in­ter­ests.

“The prime min­is­ter has to re­alise that some­times it doesn’t make sense talk­ing. What’s the sense of talk­ing about that for? How does that help us?” he asked.

“Do we get any­thing by say­ing that Venezuela is not de­mo­c­ra­t­ic? That doesn’t help us here.”

He ar­gued that Trinidad and To­ba­go must main­tain a work­ing re­la­tion­ship with whichev­er gov­ern­ment is in pow­er in Venezuela be­cause of the coun­tries’ ge­o­graph­ic prox­im­i­ty and shared se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic con­cerns.

“We have to deal with Venezuela, who­ev­er is there,” Gon­za­les said.

“We’re right next to them. We have to fix what­ev­er is here in the Gulf. They’re the ones that we have to col­lab­o­rate with to do that.”

De­spite the chal­lenges, Gon­za­les be­lieves re­la­tions are grad­u­al­ly re­turn­ing to nor­mal, al­though re­build­ing trust will take time.

“My sense is that things are turn­ing around slow­ly, but they’re com­ing back to nor­mal. Maybe, I don’t know how long it will take, six months, a year or what­ev­er, but it’s com­ing back,” he said.

His hope, he added, is that both gov­ern­ments re­main com­mit­ted to that path.

“Let’s hope she won’t go and make an­oth­er state­ment and say some­thing again,” Gon­za­les said.

“It’s soft­en­ing up. It’s com­ing back. We’re try­ing to over­come this strained re­la­tion­ship.”