Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says the re­cent high-lev­el vis­it by US Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Dan Caine, is a pos­i­tive move for T&T. Re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism by the Op­po­si­tion over the lack of trans­paren­cy and tim­ing of his vis­it, amidst es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions with Venezuela, Mooni­lal said he did not want to speak “too much” on that mat­ter, as the specifics lay with the Prime Min­is­ter and the min­is­ters with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for law en­force­ment.

“These are mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and I will leave those mat­ters to be dealt with by the Prime Min­is­ter and rel­e­vant law en­force­ment min­is­ters. But I can say it au­gurs well for the coun­try that such a high-lev­el, and pos­si­bly the high­est-lev­el mil­i­tary com­mand of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment has vis­it­ed this coun­try and is hav­ing talks on re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the threats we face in the Caribbean as a whole by nar­co-traf­fick­ers, hu­man traf­fick­ers and the drug car­tels and so on.

“I think it is very pos­i­tive, but as I said, the de­tails of that are not re­al­ly with­in my purview, and I pre­fer not to com­ment too much on that.”

Mooni­lal al­so dis­missed as “ex­treme­ly triv­ial” the Op­po­si­tion’s com­plaints about com­ments made in Par­lia­ment by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, which they were con­sid­er­ing us­ing to file a priv­i­leges mo­tion.

As a for­mer leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness, he said those mat­ters were “ex­treme­ly triv­ial and friv­o­lous, and one just has to un­der­stand that in Par­lia­ment, there is a usu­al ban­ter and cross-talk. Those things are very com­mon.

“Over the years, I my­self have en­gaged in some of that, so I don’t make too much out of it. I think there are much more im­por­tant is­sues fac­ing the coun­try now than to en­gage their en­er­gies in that kind of ir­rel­e­vant and use­less es­capades,” he said.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has crit­i­cised Je­re­mie over com­ments he made dur­ing a “hot mic” mo­ment in the Low­er House on No­vem­ber 21.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so came un­der fire for her com­ment to Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert that she would “cuff” him down for point­ing at her in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.