Venezuela rejects criticism from T&T at regional meeting

RAPHAEL JOHN-LALL & KE­JAN HAYNES

Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment has re­ject­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­marks at the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis on Tues­day, af­ter she ac­cused both Venezuela and Cu­ba of be­ing “dic­ta­tor­ships.”

In a state­ment, Cara­cas said her com­ments ran counter to the “in­te­gra­tionist spir­it” of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and its found­ing prin­ci­ples, reaf­firmed by re­gion­al lead­ers at the sum­mit. It said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s rhetoric did not re­flect na­tion­al con­sen­sus in T&T and risked harm­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions and mu­tu­al eco­nom­ic projects.

Venezuela reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion, peace and ad­her­ence to in­ter­na­tion­al law, and said it re­mained will­ing to deep­en ties with Caribbean na­tions.

Venezue­lan me­dia re­port­ed on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s harsh tone.

El Na­cional re­port­ed that she main­tained a “tense” re­la­tion­ship with Maduro un­til his cap­ture in Jan­u­ary and point­ed out that she re­mains a staunch sup­port­er of US Pres­i­dent Trump. “Per­sad-Bisses­sar, a staunch sup­port­er of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, thanked him for or­der­ing an an­ti-nar­cotics op­er­a­tion that has led to the bomb­ing of more than 40 ves­sels in the Caribbean and the Pa­cif­ic, re­sult­ing in more than 150 deaths,” the news­pa­per re­port­ed.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Prof Hamid Ghany de­fend­ed Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cism of Venezuela, de­scrib­ing her po­si­tion as bold and ap­pro­pri­ate. He said her warn­ing about what he char­ac­terised as Venezuela’s “im­pe­ri­al­ist” pos­ture, and her sup­port for mea­sures to pro­tect T&T’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty, re­flect­ed de­ci­sive lead­er­ship. Ghany ar­gued that pre­vi­ous threats from the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion were neu­tralised ear­li­er this year and that her will­ing­ness to stand firm, de­spite diplo­mat­ic ten­sion, placed her on the “right side of his­to­ry.”

He al­so sup­port­ed her con­trast be­tween Cari­com’s mul­ti-par­ty democ­ra­cies and Cu­ba’s one-par­ty sys­tem, say­ing it was “high­ly ap­pro­pri­ate” to praise the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic struc­tures en­joyed across the re­gion.

“It was in­deed sur­pris­ing to dis­cov­er that so many per­sons are so sup­port­ive of left-wing ide­ol­o­gy in the re­gion when the track record of left-wing ide­ol­o­gy in Guyana, Ja­maica and Grena­da has been so abysmal­ly poor and caused great suf­fer­ing to the pop­u­la­tions of those Cari­com coun­tries,” Ghany said.

“His­to­ry will ab­solve her,” he added.