Chester Sam­bra­no

The po­lit­i­cal bat­tle be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar seems to be head­ing for the courts as Per­sad-Bisses­sar has giv­en in­struc­tions to her lawyers to ini­ti­ate le­gal ac­tion against the Prime Min­is­ter for state­ments he made about her dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Fri­day.

Dr Row­ley host­ed a news con­fer­ence in a room at the Par­lia­ment build­ing on Fri­day, to re­spond to com­ments Per­sad-Bisses­sar had made at a news con­fer­ence ear­li­er in the day.

The both were ad­dress­ing the vis­it of Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez to T&T last month which came short­ly be­fore a ship­ment of fu­el from this coun­try to Aru­ba, was fur­ther sent to Venezuela.

US sanc­tions pro­hib­it the sale of fu­el to Venezuela.

Af­ter Per­sad-Bises­sar dis­closed doc­u­ments show­ing that se­nior ex­ec­u­tives of the Venezue­lan state oil com­pa­ny, PDVSA, was al­so on the air­craft that brought the Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent here, Row­ley crit­i­cised her ac­tions as un­pa­tri­ot­ic and closed the news con­fer­ence with the words, “You are a trai­tor la­dy.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in re­sponse, re­ferred to the Prime Min­is­ter as a “shame­less Ju­das”.

Speak­ing with the me­dia yes­ter­day dur­ing a ham­per-dis­tri­b­u­tion dri­ve at the UNC’s San Fer­nan­do Re­gion­al Of­fice on Laz­zari Street, San Fer­nan­do, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed her in­ten­tion to take le­gal ac­tion.

“All the lies, in ad­di­tion to his very, very abu­sive lan­guage and defam­a­to­ry lan­guage used on that day with re­spect to my com­ments and to my­self, I have placed the mat­ter in the hands of my lawyers to take pre-ac­tion pro­to­col with re­spect to defama­tion ac­tion against the Prime Min­is­ter for his to­tal­ly base­less al­le­ga­tions made on Fri­day evening af­ter my press con­fer­ence,” she said.

She told mem­bers of the me­dia that af­ter pro­vid­ing doc­u­ments to sup­port her state­ment on Fri­day, “in re­sponse the Prime Min­is­ter had no de­fence but to ad­mit what I was say­ing was true—that these of­fi­cials from PDVSA came and vis­it­ed him.”

‘So that mat­ter will be tak­ing place,” she added, in ref­er­ence to the defama­tion ac­tion.

When she spoke at that said news con­fer­ence, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­duced a man­i­fest from the March 27 flight that brought Venezuela’s Ro­driguez to the coun­try for a brief meet­ing.

She al­so queried whether the T&T Gov­ern­ment had talks on the Paria Fu­el Com­pa­ny fu­el deal dur­ing that meet­ing al­though it was an­nounced Ro­driguez had come to dis­cuss COVID-19-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

PM stands his ground

In a me­dia state­ment on the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Face­book page yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley sought to once again clear the air.

“In a shame­ful at­tempt to en­cour­age the Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment to ap­ply dam­ag­ing sanc­tions against the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Op­po­si­tion Leader is en­gaged in pub­lish­ing and spread­ing a se­ries of false­hoods and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in fur­ther­ance of her self­ish po­lit­i­cal ob­jec­tives,” he said.

He then out­lined what he called the undis­put­ed facts:

1. Paria Trad­ing (TT) in its re­gion­al fu­el sales busi­ness prop­er­ly sold gaso­line des­tined for Aru­ba.

2. Paria con­duct­ed no busi­ness with PDVSA.

3. Trinidad and To­ba­go con­duct­ed no fu­el busi­ness with Venezuela.

4. At a meet­ing be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and Venezuela, in­clud­ing the Vice-Pres­i­dent of Venezuela, the then Pres­i­dent of PDVSA was not in at­ten­dance.

5. The na­ture of the Venezue­lan trans­port is not a mat­ter for the Cab­i­net of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

6. Trinidad and To­ba­go, with the agree­ment of the Unit­ed Na­tions and Cari­com, recog­nis­es the Maduro Gov­ern­ment as the sit­ting Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and as such is con­strained to ac­knowl­edg­ing and deal­ing legal­ly with the au­thor­i­ties there.

7. Con­trary to the mis­in­for­ma­tion pub­lished by the Op­po­si­tion Leader the ac­tions of Trinidad and To­ba­go break no in­ter­na­tion­al law.

8. The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has no de­fin­i­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ing that this coun­try is un­der any in­ves­ti­ga­tion by any agency of the Unit­ed States.

Sanc­tions on Ro­driguez

Ro­driguez is banned from en­ter­ing neigh­bour­ing Colom­bia.

She was one of 11 of­fi­cials sanc­tioned by the Eu­ro­pean Union in June 2018, with her as­sets frozen and a trav­el ban is­sued against her.

The Mex­i­can Sen­ate froze the as­sets of of­fi­cials of the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing Del­cy Ro­dríguez, and pro­hib­it­ed them from en­ter­ing Mex­i­co in April 2018.

Switzer­land sanc­tioned Ro­driguez in Ju­ly 2018, freez­ing her as­sets and im­pos­ing a trav­el ban.

The Unit­ed States sanc­tioned Ro­driguez in Sep­tem­ber 2018 for “cor­rup­tion and hu­man­i­tar­i­an is­sues”.

None of the sanc­tions, how­ev­er, pre­vent­ed Ro­driguez from vis­it­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.