For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is again chal­leng­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to iden­ti­fy the of­fence or con­duct it be­lieves would jus­ti­fy the Unit­ed States re­vok­ing his visa and that of for­mer prime min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Row­ley said he nev­er claimed that ei­ther visa had been re­voked in a Face­book post on Mon­day, but ques­tioned the ba­sis for the UNC’s pre­vi­ous call for sanc­tions against him and Young.

“I nev­er said or in­di­cat­ed that my visa or Young’s visa was re­voked. I have no prob­lem with my visa,” Row­ley said.

“Now that the US has in­di­cat­ed the wide cat­e­gories of of­fences for which re­vo­ca­tion is ap­plic­a­ble, I sim­ply asked the UNC lack­eys which one of those cat­e­gories they thought ap­plied to me and Young to war­rant their call for sanc­tions and loss of visa. Let them an­swer that.”

Row­ley said if the UNC could not iden­ti­fy a cat­e­go­ry of of­fence, its pre­vi­ous call for ac­tion against him and Young would amount to “pure mal­ice and mis­chief with­out a ba­sis.”

He linked the is­sue to his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s deal­ings with Venezue­lan of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez and for­mer pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, ac­cus­ing the UNC of now tak­ing a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to Venezuela.

“They were sim­ply pan­der­ing to the US au­thor­i­ties hop­ing to pun­ish us for hav­ing con­tact and re­la­tions with Del­cy Ro­driguez and Maduro of the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela,” Row­ley said.

He al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of tak­ing cred­it for en­er­gy ini­tia­tives that, he said, were start­ed un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Get­ting cred­it is one thing but telling lies to steal cred­it is em­bar­rass­ing and de­spi­ca­ble,” Row­ley said, while ask­ing: “In­clud­ing, who are you talk­ing to in Venezuela?”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said Row­ley was en­ti­tled to ask ques­tions but said he could not de­ter­mine why the UNC had called for ac­tion against Row­ley and Young.

Ra­goonath point­ed to the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Ro­driguez’s vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the COVID-19 pe­ri­od, say­ing there had been con­cerns about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the then PNM gov­ern­ment and Venezue­lan of­fi­cials who were sub­ject to US sanc­tions.

On whether the Gov­ern­ment was be­ing hyp­o­crit­i­cal by now en­gag­ing Venezuela, Ra­goonath said he was not aware of Trinidad and To­ba­go hav­ing sent a del­e­ga­tion to Venezuela to ne­go­ti­ate oil and gas mat­ters.

He al­so stressed that visa de­ci­sions ul­ti­mate­ly rest­ed with the US.

“Any­body and every­body could make the same state­ment,” Ra­goonath said, adding that the key ques­tion was who had in­flu­ence over US de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed took a dif­fer­ent view, ar­gu­ing that Row­ley’s state­ment could it­self have cre­at­ed the im­pres­sion that his visa had been re­voked.

Mo­hammed de­scribed Row­ley’s chal­lenge as a “hy­po­thet­i­cal ques­tion” about some­thing that had not hap­pened.

“He’s ask­ing a ques­tion, a hy­po­thet­i­cal ques­tion. That’s what he’s do­ing,” Mo­hammed said.

He al­so re­ject­ed Row­ley’s com­par­i­son be­tween the for­mer gov­ern­ment’s deal­ings with Venezuela and the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s en­gage­ment, ar­gu­ing that in­ter­na­tion­al cir­cum­stances had changed.

Mo­hammed said Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion had dealt with Maduro’s gov­ern­ment pri­mar­i­ly from a re­gion­al per­spec­tive, with­out suf­fi­cient­ly con­sid­er­ing the wider geopo­lit­i­cal con­text.

He al­so dis­missed Row­ley’s claims about the Gov­ern­ment tak­ing cred­it for en­er­gy-sec­tor ini­tia­tives, say­ing if the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion had laid the foun­da­tions for cur­rent projects, it had failed to com­mu­ni­cate those plans ef­fec­tive­ly to the pub­lic.

Mo­hammed said the po­lit­i­cal cir­cum­stances had since changed and ar­gued that the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment had made what he con­sid­ered strate­gi­cal­ly ap­pro­pri­ate moves.

On Row­ley’s chal­lenge over the visas, Mo­hammed said the is­sue was po­lit­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant on­ly be­cause it had not ac­tu­al­ly oc­curred.

“If the an­swer to all of those ques­tions is no, then you’re talk­ing non­sense,” he said, sug­gest­ing Row­ley was us­ing the is­sue as a po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tion.