Raphael John-lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez has at­tacked Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der, call­ing him a pawn of the Unit­ed States af­ter con­tro­ver­sial state­ments he made about Venezuela.

“The on­ly nu­clear bomb was the one dropped in­to the brain of this of­fi­cial from this new­ly sworn-in Gov­ern­ment. Trinidad and To­ba­go should think of its peo­ple be­fore they try to at­tack Venezuela and re­nounce their servi­tude to the US. Gov­ern­ment that in­tends to steal our im­mense en­er­gy re­sources. They could not and will not with our de­ter­mi­na­tion to free­dom and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, wide­ly ex­er­cised in our diplo­ma­cy of peace. Venezuela is hope,” she said.

Via her In­sta­gram ac­count, she re­spond­ed to Alexan­der’s re­cent state­ments when he sug­gest­ed that In­dia could at­tack Venezuela with nu­clear bombs in de­fence of T&T be­cause of its pop­u­la­tion of East In­di­an de­scent.

In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di was in T&T in Ju­ly on a state vis­it.

When ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia, Alexan­der back­tracked on his state­ment, say­ing he will stay in his lane and leave that mat­ter in the hands of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers.

It must be not­ed that In­dia and Venezuela are close com­mer­cial part­ners, as In­dia buys Venezue­lan oil and In­dia ex­ports food and med­i­cine, among oth­er prod­ucts, to Venezuela.

Ro­dríguez her­self has vis­it­ed In­dia sev­er­al times.

She de­scribed T&T’s threat as an act of “sub­servience” to the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment.

In her opin­ion, the Unit­ed States is seek­ing to “steal” Venezuela’s en­er­gy re­sources.

Ro­driguez urged T&T to think about its own peo­ple be­fore align­ing it­self with what she de­scribed as Wash­ing­ton’s im­pe­r­i­al in­ter­ests.

She reaf­firmed Venezuela’s de­ter­mi­na­tion to de­fend its sov­er­eign­ty and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.