DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s soft­er ap­proach to­ward Venezuela’s Act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez is be­ing viewed by an­a­lysts as an ef­fort to mend strained re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries, with both sides po­ten­tial­ly ben­e­fit­ing from clos­er co­op­er­a­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­c­la­ra­tion on Wednes­day that she “loves” Ro­dríguez marks a sharp de­par­ture from the rhetoric that has de­fined re­la­tions in re­cent months. Ten­sions es­ca­lat­ed af­ter Ro­dríguez warned of a Venezue­lan re­sponse if the coun­try were at­tacked from Trinidad and To­ba­go, while politi­cians on both sides trad­ed pub­lic crit­i­cism.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les said the shift ap­pears to be part of a grad­ual ef­fort to re­build diplo­mat­ic ties.

“What we’re see­ing now is an ef­fort to try to re­store the re­la­tion­ship, and she’s do­ing this in a piece­meal kind of fash­ion,” he said.

Gon­za­les be­lieves Venezuela’s des­ig­na­tion of Per­sad-Bisses­sar as per­sona non gra­ta will even­tu­al­ly be re­scind­ed, but stressed that the dis­pute should not pre­vent both coun­tries from ad­vanc­ing ar­eas of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.

“Even if the Amer­i­cans want­ed to give us an OFAC li­cence, they could have held out and said they don’t want to deal with us. But they didn’t do that. So, in my view, yes, we’d like to see the heads meet, but it doesn’t mean that the heads have to meet for the re­la­tions to move for­ward.”

He said Venezuela al­so has strong eco­nom­ic rea­sons to im­prove re­la­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly as Ro­dríguez seeks to max­imise the coun­try’s gas ex­ports and sup­port eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery ef­forts.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, po­lit­i­cal lead­ers must be pre­pared to move be­yond past dis­putes when cir­cum­stances change.

“This is pol­i­tics. You may not like the things peo­ple say or do, but that’s pol­i­tics. You can’t hold on to old griev­ances. How would that help Venezuela? They’re go­ing to hug and kiss and so forth, and things will move on.”

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath al­so de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lat­est po­si­tion as a prag­mat­ic move, ar­gu­ing that it re­flects a will­ing­ness to pri­ori­tise Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al in­ter­ests over pre­vi­ous ten­sions with Venezuela.

He said the Prime Min­is­ter is con­tin­u­ing an ap­proach to Venezuela that was al­ready be­ing pur­sued by the for­mer PNM 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 ac­knowl­edged that ten­sions be­tween the two lead­ers may per­sist, but said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States could po­ten­tial­ly help en­cour­age Venezuela to re­con­sid­er her per­sona non gra­ta sta­tus.