Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has called on the gov­ern­ment to ur­gent­ly strength­en Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­fence ca­pa­bil­i­ties fol­low­ing ac­cu­sa­tions from Venezue­lan of­fi­cials that the coun­try has backed US mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty in the re­gion.

In a video shared yes­ter­day, Grif­fith ref­er­enced Venezuela’s claims that T&T sup­port­ed US troop move­ments in the south­ern Caribbean and ap­proved the seizure of a Venezue­lan oil tanker.

He stressed that no ev­i­dence has been pre­sent­ed to prove the na­tion’s in­volve­ment, but warned that the threats un­der­score the need to en­hance lo­cal mil­i­tary ca­pac­i­ty.

“What we must ur­gent­ly seek…he­li­copters and fixed-wing air­craft for the Air Guard, which has been left vir­tu­al­ly non-func­tion­al by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Grif­fith said. “The Air Guard doesn’t even have a kite to fly.”

How­ev­er, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah, speak­ing dur­ing a demon­stra­tion out­side the US Em­bassy, cau­tioned that bol­ster­ing the Air Guard may not ad­dress the full scope of the threat.

“No beef­ing up of the Air Guard could do any­thing about an at­tack that might in­volve Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause we now have US mil­i­tary as­sets. The Prime Min­is­ter is al­low­ing US mil­i­tary planes to fly in and out of our air­ports, which then makes our air­ports a tar­get,” Ab­du­lah said.

He crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for the US, not­ing that while no one wants con­flict, the out­come of es­ca­lat­ing re­gion­al ten­sions re­mains un­cer­tain.