Now that some time has passed af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment re­gard­ing the al­le­ga­tions by Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, the path may be clear for non-emo­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions and diplo­ma­cy to be used in deal­ing with the re­al­i­ties of the claim from Cara­cas. The ex­pec­ta­tion, there­fore, is that the Prime Min­is­ter will leave the han­dling of the al­le­ga­tions to the rel­e­vant min­is­ter/s and to the diplo­mat­ic staff who have de­vel­oped re­la­tion­ships with their Venezue­lan coun­ter­parts.

The Prime Min­is­ter must al­so be aware and lis­ten care­ful­ly to the fish­er­folk from the deep south of Trinidad, who, dai­ly, may in­ter­act with the Venezue­lan Guardia Na­cional as they seek to earn a liv­ing for their fam­i­lies. As is well known for decades by per­sons in the fish­ing in­dus­try here, they have been con­sis­tent­ly ar­rest­ed, their catch tak­en from them, with many hav­ing spent long pe­ri­ods in Venezue­lan jails.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, there­fore, has to be cog­nizant of what she says go­ing for­ward and the like­ly re­ac­tions of those in Venezuela, out­side of what­ev­er the ad­min­is­tra­tion in Cara­cas may have in mind.

Both gov­ern­ments must al­so be ful­ly con­scious of the his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions be­tween the two coun­tries, with ge­o­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty mak­ing for le­gal and il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty of all kinds to take place. Dur­ing the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, there were, in fact, al­le­ga­tions of arms traf­fick­ing tak­ing place be­tween the coun­tries, which aid­ed and abet­ted crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties here.

There is an­oth­er el­e­ment which has to be con­sid­ered by the Gov­ern­ment in Port-of-Spain when think­ing about re­spond­ing to the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion's claims. The al­le­ga­tion, as it was made, did not charge that there was di­rect com­plic­i­ty be­tween the Gov­ern­ment here and those who were seek­ing to fa­cil­i­tate the al­leged crim­i­nal ac­tions be­ing planned. Sure, the claim does re­flect neg­a­tive­ly on bor­der se­cu­ri­ty in­ad­e­qua­cies in T&T, but that is al­so a pos­si­bil­i­ty in oth­er coun­tries any­where in the world.

More­over, if the Prime Min­is­ter want­ed to, she could have tak­en refuge in the fact that her Gov­ern­ment has been in of­fice for less than two months and seek to shift the blame for T&T's porous bor­ders to the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

While Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has not been shy about ar­tic­u­lat­ing and un­der­lin­ing her loy­al­ty to Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ag­i­ta­tion against the Maduro regime, she should not be tak­ing up what is called in the ver­nac­u­lar, the “fire-rage” of the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent. She should sure­ly con­sid­er the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of Trump to fight his own bat­tles un­der cir­cum­stances of his choos­ing and with­out any as­sis­tance from her Gov­ern­ment.

What the op­por­tu­ni­ty for a restart al­so does, though, is to al­low both sides to ful­ly in­ves­ti­gate what has hap­pened and to bring their own diplo­mat­ic and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty re­sources in­to op­er­a­tion to counter il­le­gal­i­ty, if it did in­deed take place as de­scribed.

What can sure­ly be of ben­e­fit to this coun­try is that a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion, if it turns up some form of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty which may be tak­ing place with­in this coun­try’s ter­ri­to­ry, will give the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces a han­dle on it and they can then go af­ter the crim­i­nals in­volved.

There is, how­ev­er, re­al­ly no room for un­need­ed con­tention which can lead to some form of con­flict.