SASCHA WIL­SON

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader David Ab­du­lah says Venezue­lan na­tion­als can­not de­ter­mine what T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy should be. He was com­ment­ing on calls by Venezue­lans in this coun­try for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to sup­port their coun­try’s op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do as the in­ter­im pres­i­dent of Venezuela. A group of Venezue­lans on Sat­ur­day marched around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in sup­port of Guai­do and dis­trib­uted copies of an open let­ter to Row­ley. A

At a press con­fer­ence at the MSJ’s head­quar­ters in San Fer­nan­do, Ab­du­lah said, “Cit­i­zens of Venezuela can ap­peal to the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and the par­ties in Venezuela but Venezue­lans here in Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not de­ter­mine what the for­eign pol­i­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go ought to be. It is the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go ul­ti­mate­ly and the gov­ern­ments of Cari­com and the cit­i­zens of Cari­com who must de­ter­mine the for­eign pol­i­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go and of Cari­com.”

Re­it­er­at­ing his sup­port for the ini­tia­tives of Cari­com and the po­si­tion of the T&T Gov­ern­ment on the po­lit­i­cal tur­moil, Ab­du­lah said he was glad that Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro was open to di­a­logue and me­di­a­tion. “Very re­gret­tably, but not sur­pris­ing, Guai­do has tak­en the con­sis­tent right-wing line of the op­po­si­tion re­ject­ing any talks, re­ject­ing any me­di­a­tion and sim­ply want­i­ng for re­solve the thing by force backed, of course, by the Unit­ed States and some oth­er coun­tries.”

He said Maduro got sig­nif­i­cant sup­port at Sat­ur­day’s demon­stra­tion in Venezuela which was much big­ger than Guai­do’s ral­ly. “So it is not as if Pres­i­dent Maduro is cling­ing on to pow­er by him­self and so on and the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the Venezue­lans are against him. That is not the case.”

Ad­dress­ing Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment that she is not in­ter­est­ed in a coali­tion, Ab­du­lah made it clear that his par­ty was nev­er in­ter­est­ed in unit­ing with the UNC. MSJ was one of the par­ties in Per­sad-Bisses­sar ’s 2010 coali­tion gov­ern­ment, but it sev­ered ties just two years in­to of­fice. “So it is not a dis­ap­point­ment or any­thing for us to hear what Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, be­cause that (unit­ing) was not in our realm of think­ing what­so­ev­er.” He said both the Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion and Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment have failed the coun­try and its peo­ple.

MSJ, he said, will be con­test­ing all seats in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.