‘I LOVE DELCY’

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

De­spite a year of diplo­mat­ic fall­out be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela, in­clud­ing be­ing de­clared per­sona non gra­ta in Cara­cas, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­pears ready to turn a new page with act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez.

Asked yes­ter­day whether she had a mes­sage for Ro­dríguez, Per­sad-Bisses­sar replied: “I love her. I look for­ward to meet­ing her.”

That meet­ing could take place be­fore the end of the month, with the Prime Min­is­ter re­veal­ing that plans are be­ing made for the two lead­ers to meet on the side­lines of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) in New York.

“I think there is a plan that we will both meet at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Sep­tem­ber 25 ... There is a plan. If it doesn’t hap­pen, I’ll let you know. But that is a plan. Min­is­ter Sobers is work­ing on it,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said af­ter at­tend­ing the cer­e­mo­ny mark­ing the open­ing of the new law term at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain.

The warm re­marks mark a sig­nif­i­cant shift fol­low­ing a pe­ri­od of strained re­la­tions be­tween the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

Last year, Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly de­clared Per­sad-Bisses­sar per­sona non gra­ta amid ac­cu­sa­tions that Trinidad and To­ba­go was sup­port­ing Unit­ed States mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion against Venezuela.

At the height of the dis­pute, Ro­dríguez launched a scathing at­tack on Per­sad-Bisses­sar, de­scrib­ing her as a woman “who crawls like a worm.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­spond­ed by dis­miss­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion as “use­less” and ac­cused Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties of at­tempt­ing to bul­ly small­er neigh­bour­ing states.

Ten­sions al­so ex­tend­ed to en­er­gy mat­ters, with the Prime Min­is­ter main­tain­ing at the time that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fu­ture did not de­pend on Venezuela and that her Gov­ern­ment would not suc­cumb to what she de­scribed as “black­mail from the Venezue­lans for po­lit­i­cal sup­port.”

In April this year, Ro­dríguez met with sev­er­al re­gion­al lead­ers, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley and Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell. She al­so held talks with for­mer T&T prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

As those en­gage­ments fu­elled spec­u­la­tion that T&T was be­ing side­lined, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was not con­cerned that the coun­try was be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly ex­clud­ed.

How­ev­er, re­la­tions ap­pear to have im­proved fol­low­ing a re­cent vis­it to Venezuela by For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the trip, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the vis­it as a suc­cess.

“Min­is­ter Sobers did very well. He was very suc­cess­ful in his vis­it ... What­ev­er has to be done, we will do in the best in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela ... Ex­pect the best, more to come,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence that Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas would be­gin flow­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go with­in a year.

“I have ab­solute­ly no doubt that gas from Venezuela will come to Trinidad and To­ba­go. It is the on­ly fun­nel, the on­ly place it can pass. We are sev­en miles away and it will come. We have al­ready signed agree­ments with BP. We hope to con­clude agree­ments with Shell, XRG and many oth­er com­pa­nies. I have ab­solute­ly no doubt that in the next year we would see nat­ur­al gas com­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that the ties be­tween the two coun­tries ex­tend be­yond diplo­ma­cy and en­er­gy, cit­ing her per­son­al fam­i­ly con­nec­tions to Venezuela.

“You may not know, my moth­er-in-law is Venezue­lan. My two grand-nephews are Venezue­lan. Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela have very, very close ties,” she said.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said the Prime Min­is­ter’s lat­est po­si­tion re­flects a will­ing­ness to place na­tion­al in­ter­ests above past ten­sions and to con­tin­ue en­gage­ment ef­forts ini­ti­at­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“I would not say hypocrisy. I would say sim­ply a nec­es­sary step in terms of how we go for­ward ... In her mind, she’s do­ing what she has to do and that’s what’s im­por­tant,” Ra­goonath said.

He added that while ten­sions may still ex­ist be­tween the two lead­ers, Per­sad-Bisses­sar could po­ten­tial­ly lever­age her re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States to seek a re­ver­sal of her per­sona non gra­ta sta­tus, al­though it re­mains un­cer­tain whether that will oc­cur.

For­mer prime min­is­ter and for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young is ques­tion­ing whether Venezue­lan act­ing Pres­i­dent Ro­dríguez shares Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sen­ti­ments.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Young al­so crit­i­cised the Prime Min­is­ter’s treat­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens.

“Ask the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go how Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s love is work­ing out for them,” he said. “In­creased fines, loss of jobs, no book grants, states of emer­gency and PDOs, no CDAP drugs, pub­lic ser­vants’ 10 per cent not re­ceived yet, in­creased elec­tric­i­ty rates and LPG prices, and the shut­ting down of en­er­gy com­pa­nies and small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es. That is Kam­la’s style of love.”

He added, “You should ask Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, who was the sub­ject of Kam­la’s ver­bal at­tacks and degra­da­tion from 2018 up to a cou­ple of months ago, if she loves Kam­la.”