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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Diplomat: T&T right to resist OAS allowing Guaidó attack

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NEWS DESK
1666 days ago
20201218
Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States and the Organisation of American States.  (Image courtesy antiguanewsroom.com)

Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States and the Organisation of American States. (Image courtesy antiguanewsroom.com)

Caribbean diplo­mat, Sir Ronald Sanders, has de­scribed as “sor­did” and “a pre­sump­tu­ous as­sault”, the re­cent at­tack on Trinidad and To­ba­go by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Venezuela’s Juan Guaidó, at a meet­ing of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred on Wednes­day 16 De­cem­ber 2020.

In an open ed­i­to­r­i­al pub­lished by a re­gion­al news agency (An­tigua Break­ing News), Sir Ronald states that what oc­curred should nev­er have been al­lowed to hap­pen, giv­en that Venezuela’s mem­ber­ship in the OAS end­ed in April 2019, and the Venezue­lan (Guaidó) rep­re­sen­ta­tive does not rep­re­sent the du­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment of that coun­try, but rather:

“…the pur­port­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Venezuela is mere­ly the spokesper­son for on­ly one of many po­lit­i­cal par­ties in Venezuela…”

Sir Ronald Sanders is An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­nary and Plenipo­ten­tiary to the Unit­ed States and the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States and was in at­ten­dance at the meet­ing in ques­tion.

In the ar­ti­cle, Sir Ronald re­counts the events as they oc­curred, ob­serv­ing that what oc­curred was mere­ly a con­tin­u­a­tion of an at­tack which had been launched against T&T by Mr Guaidó, him­self, on No­vem­ber 24th, con­cern­ing the cap­siz­ing of a boat con­tain­ing 16 Venezue­lans in the Gulf of Paria, all of whom ap­par­ent­ly per­ished.

“In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Guaidó’s agent made base­less ac­cu­sa­tion against Trinidad and To­ba­go, claim­ing that ‘there have been abus­es and mis­treat­ment of Venezue­lans in Trinidad’ and de­mand­ing that ‘Trinidad and To­ba­go al­low ac­cess to its ter­ri­to­ry and pro­vide pro­tec­tion to peo­ple com­ing from Venezuela, ob­serv­ing due process and the prin­ci­ple of non-re­foule­ment’.”

Sir Ronald added: “The Am­bas­sador of Trinidad and To­ba­go, An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer, made a dig­ni­fied and ro­bust re­sponse that did not recog­nise Guaidó’s agent, but re­ject­ed all his re­marks.  The Am­bas­sador was clear that the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights had stat­ed that the in­ci­dent in which 16 Venezue­lans had lost their lives had oc­curred ‘with­in Venezuela’s ju­ris­dic­tion’.  He point­ed out that ‘Trinidad and To­ba­go—a small is­land State—has com­pas­sion­ate­ly tak­en the un­prece­dent­ed step of of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­ter­ing and fa­cil­i­tat­ing over 16,000 mi­grants from Venezuela to live and work in Trinidad and To­ba­go.  This hos­pi­tal­i­ty con­tin­ues even as our econ­o­my faces sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges that have af­fect­ed our own peo­ple’.”

Ac­cord­ing to Sir Ronald, “There should have been many shamed faces at the end of the Am­bas­sador’s re­sponse to the re­marks by an agent with not one shred of au­thor­i­ty to speak for the peo­ple and au­thor­i­ties of Venezuela.  This event re­flects a per­verse OAS no one should want, and which ill-serves the peo­ple of the Amer­i­c­as.”

The ca­reer diplo­mat is of the view that the OAS, as it cur­rent­ly stands, “is the hand­maid­en of pow­er­ful gov­ern­ments, which con­trol it through var­i­ous meth­ods, in­clud­ing co­er­cion”. 

He main­tains that the at­tack on the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go by the Guaidó rep­re­sen­ta­tive was “wrong­ly al­lowed but right­ly re­sist­ed”.

PoliticsTrinidad and TobagoVenezuelaOAS


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