DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is deny­ing claims that her Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing regime change in Venezuela, but stopped short of say­ing whether she recog­nis­es Nicolás Maduro as the coun­try’s Pres­i­dent.

Speak­ing at the VIP lounge of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Wednes­day evening, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ceived a bois­ter­ous wel­come from mem­bers of her Cab­i­net af­ter re­turn­ing from her first diplo­mat­ic mis­sion since win­ning the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Her trip in­clud­ed an ad­dress at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York on Sep­tem­ber 22, fol­lowed by talks in Wash­ing­ton with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio.

The Prime Min­is­ter framed her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s top pri­or­i­ties as crime re­duc­tion and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty. She al­so hailed US back­ing for an OFAC li­cence to de­vel­op the Drag­on gas field, a joint project with Venezuela.

But her com­ments on Cara­cas drew the sharpest fo­cus.

“There’s been no dis­cus­sion about regime change (with the US). Our con­cern has al­ways been, and theirs, which we share, is re­al­ly deal­ing with the crim­i­nals, the nar­co-traf­fick­ers, the hu­man traf­fick­ers, the gun run­ners, and that is my con­cern, and that is what we want,” she said.

Asked di­rect­ly if her Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es Maduro, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: “I don’t think that ques­tion aris­es, with the great­est of re­spect.”

As op­po­si­tion leader in 2019, she open­ly backed Juan Guaidó, who de­clared him­self in­ter­im pres­i­dent. Now in pow­er, she struck a more mea­sured tone, stress­ing co­op­er­a­tion with both Wash­ing­ton and Cara­cas.

“We have sev­er­al peo­ple. I have my min­is­ter of for­eign af­fairs, we have two min­is­ters in the min­istry of en­er­gy and of course, you’ll have me,” she said when asked who would lead ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela.

“I’ve just re­turned. So, give me a mo­ment to breathe the oxy­gen in Trinidad and To­ba­go. And we’ll take our steps for­ward as we go, and we’ll let you know.”

‘No easy task’

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj cau­tioned that se­cur­ing the Drag­on li­cence will not be straight­for­ward.

“The pub­lic needs to un­der­stand clear­ly what are the facts of the ne­go­ti­a­tion be­tween Trinidad, Venezuela, and the Unit­ed States,” he said. “Such com­plex ne­go­ti­a­tions re­quire a frame­work built on mu­tu­al re­spect and trust. That will take time, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the ir­ra­tional state­ments we’ve seen from politi­cians on both sides.”

Ram­samooj said do­mes­tic rhetoric mat­ters lit­tle in the face of glob­al en­er­gy pol­i­tics.

“The oth­er min­ion voic­es are re­al­ly ir­rel­e­vant to this in­ter­na­tion­al ac­cess to re­sources of Venezuela. The sit­u­a­tion is about whether or not you want to change regime is re­al­ly not that im­por­tant when you con­sid­er the US’s ma­jor con­cern is ac­cess­ing as much of those re­sources to ben­e­fit the US econ­o­my.”

How­ev­er, re­gion­al ac­tivist and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Caribbean Move­ment for Peace and In­te­gra­tion, David Den­ny, warned that the Gov­ern­ment may have al­ready harmed re­la­tions.

“I think she has dam­aged the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela and Caribbean peo­ple be­cause she did not con­sult with Cari­com,” said Den­ny

“But I think the best way for us to go for­ward is for the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad to en­ter in­to di­rect di­a­logue with the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela with the in­clu­sion of Cari­com.”

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les al­so sug­gest­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Gov­ern­ment has lit­tle choice but to deal di­rect­ly with Maduro.

“The mere fact I even heard the min­is­ter of en­er­gy say he’s will­ing to go to Venezuela in the morn­ing to talk to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, I think the mere fact they are say­ing these things is be­cause you want to deal with the gov­ern­ment in pow­er in Venezuela. She may not say it, but I think that’s the re­al­i­ty.”

The deal may be fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by le­gal mat­ters. Two in­junc­tions by High Court Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad re­quire that any pro­ceeds from the Drag­on gas field be paid to Cono­coPhillips rather than the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

Ef­forts by Guardian Me­dia to reach for­mer am­bas­sador to Venezuela Ed­mund Dil­lon and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.