So, for the mo­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar has won the day.

There has been no at­tack on a tar­get in Trinidad and To­ba­go by Venezuela so far.

And her oth­er cal­cu­lat­ed po­si­tions were spot on. There was no di­rect mil­i­tary at­tack on Venezuela by the US, ex­cept for mil­i­tary tar­gets tak­en out with pre­ci­sion, and nei­ther T&T land­space nor wa­ters sur­round­ing our is­lands were used as a launch­ing pad for any overt or covert ac­tion against the Nico­las Maduro regime.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s cal­cu­la­tion that T&T’s even­tu­al re­ceipt of Venezuela’s nat­ur­al gas de­pends more on the Unit­ed States than on any­one in Venezuela, will prove to be cor­rect. As events un­fold in Venezuela, any in­ter­nal chaos in that coun­try with spillover im­pact on T&T, the Prime Min­is­ter has con­fi­dence that these will be met with US pro­tec­tion and sup­port.

It is more than like­ly that our PM has had such as­sur­ances from rel­e­vant US of­fi­cials. And in the weeks lead­ing up to the armed es­cort of Maduro out of Venezuela, she es­tab­lished her­self as the most vo­cal al­ly of the US, but es­pe­cial­ly of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Caribbean, and that should count for some­thing in the near to medi­um term. There may be gains with the US but chal­leng­ing gaps to bridge with Cari­com and oth­er coun­tries in the hemi­sphere.

While Venezue­lan mi­grants across the world were cel­e­brat­ing Maduro’s es­cort to a New York prison, the streets of Cara­cas were qui­et on Jan­u­ary 3rd. Many of the eight mil­lion peo­ple who left Venezuela to es­cape Chavez and Maduro, but es­pe­cial­ly Maduro, were an­tic­i­pat­ing free­dom from dic­ta­tor­ship. Most in Venezuela, un­der se­vere eco­nom­ic hard­ship and po­lit­i­cal­ly frag­ment­ed, were over­whelmed by the un­cer­tain­ty of what form a tran­si­tion might take, how the com­ing days would un­fold, and what it might mean for them.

And with­in less than 48 hours, they wit­nessed the swear­ing-in of Del­cy Ro­driguez as the re­place­ment for Maduro, by her broth­er, Jorge Ro­driguez, who is pres­i­dent of the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly. Del­cy Ro­driguez her­self is on the US sanc­tions list but Jorge has not been sanc­tioned. But the pow­er in Venezuela now rests with this Ro­driguez duo, one in charge of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment ap­pa­ra­tus and the oth­er the leg­is­la­ture.

This could not have gone down well with the Venezue­lan pop­u­la­tion, who are liv­ing with the full re­al­i­sa­tion now that Maduro is gone but there has been no regime change. The unit­ed op­po­si­tion, which con­test­ed the 2024 elec­tion and, ac­cord­ing to tal­ly sheets, won that elec­tion, must be full of anx­i­ety and un­cer­tain­ty.

So, the con­tin­u­ing qui­et across Venezuela is be­cause there is no cause for cel­e­bra­tion. The regime is still in­tact. All that has re­al­ly hap­pened is that Maduro was sold out by trust­ed col­leagues and col­lab­o­ra­tors and pow­er has shift­ed with­in the regime. As of now, Maduro is in prison but there is no regime change in Venezuela. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is sim­ply get­ting the regime to change course in keep­ing with US dic­tates. This is “a de­mand for change of be­hav­iour by a regime,” ac­cord­ing to House Speak­er Mike John­ston, not regime change.

US Pres­i­dent Trump ini­tial­ly an­nounced that the Unit­ed States would “run Venezuela” for a time un­til “a prop­er tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy” can be ef­fec­tive­ly made. He al­so made an off-hand­ed com­ment that No­bel Peace Prize win­ner Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do, who many saw as a ma­jor Op­po­si­tion leader in Venezuela, did not have the re­spect or good will, in his es­ti­ma­tion, to take over as pres­i­dent of Venezuela.

Whether this was a sig­nal to Del­cy Ro­driguez to be more flex­i­ble or more co­op­er­a­tive, it is hard to say. But this state­ment raised more doubt and un­cer­tain­ty in the US and, the world over, about the in­ten­tions of Pres­i­dent Trump to­ward Venezuela. The re­al ques­tion to be asked is: Will there be a tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance and will the sov­er­eign will of the Venezue­lan peo­ple be re­spect­ed?

It is one thing to vi­o­late the sov­er­eign bor­ders of a coun­try, which many coun­tries, in­clud­ing Venezuela un­der Maduro, have done. Ac­cord­ing to the Mil­i­tary In­ter­ven­tion Project of Up­p­sala Uni­ver­si­ty (Nor­way), 150 coun­tries have ex­pe­ri­enced mil­i­tary vi­o­la­tions of their sov­er­eign­ty since WWII.

How­ev­er, it is an­oth­er thing al­to­geth­er to en­ter a coun­try to gov­ern that coun­try ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, in vi­o­la­tion of the sov­er­eign will of the peo­ple of that coun­try. That bor­ders on oc­cu­pa­tion. And to oc­cu­py, in this in­stance, sup­port­ing a dic­ta­tor­ship and le­git­imis­ing it is a be­tray­al of the Venezue­lan peo­ple and their as­pi­ra­tions, pure and sim­ple.