Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Tem­po­rary In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Wes­ley Gib­bings says a unit­ed Cari­com po­si­tion is vi­tal and ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial on the cur­rent is­sues con­cern­ing Venezuela, and he doesn’t see any sense in the frag­men­ta­tion that’s be­ing pro­posed by some.

Gib­bings, who is al­so a jour­nal­ist, was yes­ter­day sworn in as a tem­po­rary re­place­ment in the ab­sence of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­siree Mur­ray, who is over­seas.

Gib­bings said it was a great ho­n­our to serve his coun­try, and added that the new po­si­tion ap­prox­i­mat­ed what he al­ready did as a jour­nal­ist, which was to have a close look at the ex­er­cise of pow­er and the qual­i­ty of this and be­ing free to rep­re­sent his views and those of oth­ers, who may be un­rep­re­sent­ed or un­der-rep­re­sent­ed.

When asked about his view on T&T’s stance and every­thing sur­round­ing the cur­rent US-Venezuela is­sue, Gib­bings said, “Well, my per­son­al view has been for a very long time that when we speak about ‘we’. The ‘we’ I speak about are cit­i­zens. So, the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty.

“We’ve had the Fed­er­a­tion ex­pe­ri­ence, and I think it was a missed boat that has lin­gered, and it is there, per­haps a lit­tle fur­ther away than we had ex­pect­ed in years past. So, I think that a unit­ed Cari­com po­si­tion is vi­tal and ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial, and I don’t see any sense in the frag­men­ta­tion that’s be­ing pro­posed by some.”

Gib­bings was asked if the sit­u­a­tion would be wors­ened by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der’s ad­mis­sion yes­ter­day that he was speak­ing “off the top of his head” and en­gag­ing in hy­per­bole dur­ing a “live,” when Alexan­der re­cent­ly said In­dia stood ready to “nuke” Venezuela to de­fend T&T.

He said, “To the ex­tent that peo­ple are in­clined to take it se­ri­ous­ly, I think it will both­er some folk, but for those who’ve looked at this is­sue very clear­ly in terms of geopo­lit­i­cal arrange­ments and the po­si­tion of T&T and the Caribbean in the wider geopol­i­tics, I think there would be a dif­fer­ent kind of un­der­stand­ing of what is re­quired and what is the cur­rent state of af­fairs.”

Gib­bings was asked how he might deal with the In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor­ship, af­ter the pres­sure the In­de­pen­dent bench has gone through, in­clud­ing the UNC PRO’s re­mark that the In­de­pen­dent bench was like “an­oth­er Op­po­si­tion in the Par­lia­ment.”

He said his jour­nal­is­tic record showed his po­si­tion on things has al­ways been one of in­de­pen­dence—not aligned to any par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal po­si­tion.