Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­con­sid­er her claim that T&T was off-lim­its to Venezuela and that she would put the Coast Guard on alert to use dead­ly force if any ves­sel from that coun­try sought to ac­cess lo­cal wa­ters il­le­gal­ly.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the com­ment dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, where she al­so said her Gov­ern­ment was stand­ing “solid­ly with the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment on the is­sues con­cern­ing Venezuela.”

Her re­marks fol­lowed claims by Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, who al­leged that a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al—iden­ti­fied as “Guis Kendell Jerome”—had been cap­tured while trav­el­ling from T&T with a group he la­belled “ter­ror­ists” at­tempt­ing to desta­bilise Venezuela. Ca­bel­lo al­so claimed T&T had be­come a “launch­pad” for mer­ce­nar­ies and provo­ca­teurs and warned, “There must be jus­tice. We are go­ing af­ter the gangs, wher­ev­er they are … To­geth­er, we will guar­an­tee peace in this coun­try.”

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue in a Face­book post yes­ter­day, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse had veered in­to dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry.

“It is the height of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ar­guably, bor­der­line in­san­i­ty, for our Gov­ern­ment, led by none oth­er than the Prime Min­is­ter, Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, to de­clare a use of dead­ly force pol­i­cy on any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel en­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ters from Venezuela,” Young wrote.

“Venezuela is sev­en miles off of the coast of Trinidad and To­ba­go and is our clos­est ge­o­graph­i­cal neigh­bour. As has hap­pened on many oc­ca­sions in the past, our radar sys­tem may fail to pick up ma­rine ves­sels en­ter­ing and leav­ing our wa­ters. This is noth­ing new.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment can­not re­li­ably de­ter­mine the ori­gin or in­tent of every ves­sel and crit­i­cised the pos­ture of the ad­min­is­tra­tion as reck­less.

“In fact, it is the same UNC that used to scream in op­po­si­tion about our porous bor­ders. So to now pre­tend that you can con­clu­sive­ly de­ter­mine whether a ves­sel left Trinidad and To­ba­go des­tined for Venezuela with per­sons on­board is sim­ply not true.”

He urged the Gov­ern­ment to adopt a more diplo­mat­ic ap­proach to deal­ing with Venezuela.

“I call up­on the Gov­ern­ment to en­gage in prop­er diplo­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Venezuela and to ap­pre­ci­ate that as the Gov­ern­ment, you have to act re­spon­si­bly and ju­di­cious­ly. Car­ry­ing on with false brava­do as­so­ci­at­ed with soap box pol­i­tics is not on­ly un­be­com­ing but frankly dan­ger­ous in the cir­cum­stances.”

He al­so warned of po­ten­tial con­se­quences for T&T’s econ­o­my, not­ing that the coun­try’s fu­ture en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty de­pends in part on main­tain­ing sta­ble re­la­tions with Venezuela.

Young added, “This Gov­ern­ment needs to wake up and stop jeop­ar­dis­ing our fu­ture and our coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion.”

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so took to Face­book on Thurs­day crit­i­cis­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ap­proach and call­ing for more mea­sured diplo­mat­ic ap­proach.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith al­so joined the cho­rus of per­sons call­ing for diplo­ma­cy, warn­ing in a so­cial me­dia post that T&T lacks the means for mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion.

“It is com­mend­able that the Prime Min­is­ter has tak­en a firm stance in re­fus­ing to let Trinidad and To­ba­go be bul­lied. But strength is not just about words. It’s about fore­sight, ca­pa­bil­i­ty, and lead­er­ship,” he said.

Grif­fith said re­cent de­vel­op­ments make it clear the coun­try must pur­sue “diplo­mat­ic di­a­logue and con­sul­ta­tion, rather than mus­cle-flex­ing.”

He point­ed to past in­ci­dents where Venezuela’s Guardia Na­cional seized lo­cal fish­ing ves­sels, say­ing those ten­sions were re­solved through ne­go­ti­a­tion.

“We didn’t re­spond with threats—we re­spond­ed with diplo­ma­cy, and through sus­tained di­a­logue, we es­tab­lished a bi­lat­er­al agree­ment which led to those in­cur­sions stop­ping. A win for both coun­tries in­volved.”

Grif­fith said the coun­try’s de­fence ca­pa­bil­i­ty is in no state to re­spond to ex­ter­nal threats.

“We have no air­craft, no he­li­copters, no drones, and even the ves­sels that we were sup­posed to have ac­quired, that be­ing the OPVs—would have been ac­quired with­out ef­fec­tive fir­ing sys­tems, mak­ing them lit­tle more than float­ing stones in a mod­ern con­fronta­tion.”

He added, “The idea that we could stand toe-to-toe in the Gulf is not just un­re­al­is­tic—it is dan­ger­ous.”

Grif­fith blamed the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for fur­ther weak­en­ing mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty. He said diplo­ma­cy must be the im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty—not be­cause the coun­try is weak, but be­cause it is the on­ly ra­tio­nal choice.