Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira yes­ter­day is­sued a state­ment say­ing he was deeply con­cern and dis­ap­point­ed af­ter For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers de­clined to an­swer sev­er­al ques­tions re­gard­ing Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for the US’s nar­co-ter­ror­ism cam­paign in re­la­tion to Venezuela.

Sobers cit­ed Sen­ate Stand­ing Or­der 26(3), stat­ing that the pub­li­ca­tion of the an­swers would be con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est. This oc­curred dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting, where Vieira had posed sev­er­al ques­tions in­di­vid­u­al­ly for Sobers to an­swer.

These called for Sobers to state among oth­er things the ba­sis of Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion when it ex­pressed sup­port for US ac­tions de­scribed as tar­get­ing nar­co-ter­ror­ism in re­la­tion to Venezuela, and whether the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port is con­fined to counter-nar­cotics and transna­tion­al crime sup­pres­sion ob­jec­tives.

He al­so asked for Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy po­si­tion, giv­en pub­lic state­ments link­ing US counter-nar­cotics ac­tion with broad­er en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions.

For each ques­tion, Sobers replied, “Pur­suant to the ques­tion raised, as Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, it is my be­lief that it is pru­dent to in­voke Stand­ing Or­der 26(3) which states, in­ter alia, that a min­is­ter may de­cline to an­swer ques­tions, if in his opin­ion the pub­li­ca­tion of the an­swer would be con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est.”

In a me­dia com­ment lat­er is­sued, Vieira stat­ed, “I am nat­u­ral­ly dis­ap­point­ed that the min­is­ter de­clined to an­swer the ques­tions I placed on the Or­der Pa­per con­cern­ing T&T’s po­si­tion in re­la­tion to re­cent Unit­ed States ac­tions tar­get­ing what has been de­scribed as ‘nar­co-ter­ror­ism’ in Venezuela.

“My ques­tions were straight­for­ward. They sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the ba­sis up­on which the Gov­ern­ment ex­pressed sup­port for these ac­tions, whether that sup­port is lim­it­ed to counter-nar­cotics co­op­er­a­tion, and how that po­si­tion aligns with the prin­ci­ples of in­ter­na­tion­al law, in­clud­ing the UN Char­ter, the prin­ci­ple of non-in­ter­ven­tion, and the pro­hi­bi­tion on the use of force. The min­is­ter has de­clined to pro­vide an­swers on the ba­sis that do­ing so would not be in the pub­lic in­ter­est. While I re­spect that there may be cir­cum­stances where sen­si­tive mat­ters re­quire cau­tion, the in­vo­ca­tion of the ‘pub­lic in­ter­est’ with­out any ex­pla­na­tion is deeply un­sat­is­fac­to­ry.”

Vieira said par­lia­men­tary ques­tions ex­ist pre­cise­ly to en­sure trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance. “When ques­tions touch­ing on for­eign pol­i­cy, re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty, and po­ten­tial se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions for T&T go unan­swered, it leaves the pub­lic with­out clar­i­ty on is­sues that may af­fect our sov­er­eign­ty, our diplo­mat­ic pos­ture, and our na­tion­al in­ter­est. Si­lence in these cir­cum­stances is rarely help­ful. Si­lence can mean many things, but it on­ly works un­til it does not. In de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties, le­git­i­ma­cy ul­ti­mate­ly de­pends up­on open­ness and ac­count­abil­i­ty,” he added.

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion.