There comes a time in na­tion­al life when all par­ties must stand to­geth­er to demon­strate the val­ue of uni­ty.

The Venezue­lan cri­sis presents our Re­pub­lic with one such mo­ment.

At­tempts to paint Dr Kei­th Row­ley as a vil­lain in the piece is to en­gage in the kind of work where the artist throws paint on­to the can­vas in­stead of the pa­tient ap­pli­ca­tion of brush strokes to cre­ate a mas­ter­piece.

We should be con­cerned by the move by the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in seiz­ing the mo­ment to pre­tend that she is the Leader of the Re­pub­lic and de­clare for Juan Guai­do, who swore him­self in as the Pres­i­dent of Venezuela.

Here was not a mo­ment for a dis­play of dis­uni­ty but one ripe for demon­strat­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go be­lieved and could use its good of­fices to sup­port ef­forts to defuse the ten­sion in Cara­cas and re­solve the im­passe.

As the OAS vote on Venezuela showed, Cari­com was di­vid­ed when they need­ed to have been unit­ed. They failed to recog­nise the wis­dom for uni­ty on for­eign pol­i­cy is­sues. That's the same mis­take Per­sad-Bisses­sar is cur­rent­ly mak­ing.

For the re­gion­al lead­ers, to­day's cri­sis served to re­mind them of the im­por­tance of clar­i­fy­ing po­si­tions on geopo­lit­i­cal ques­tions and to live up to the in­ten­tions of the found­ing fa­thers who fash­ioned the treaty at Ch­aguara­mas on the pil­lar of a com­mon for­eign pol­i­cy.

Pic­tures of thou­sands of peo­ple in the streets in Venezue­lan cities send a clear and un­am­bigu­ous mes­sage that res­o­lu­tion will not come eas­i­ly be­fore more peo­ple are harmed and even more seek to leave the coun­try.

Fur­ther desta­bil­i­sa­tion is un­doubt­ed­ly on the cards as both Pres­i­dent Maduro and Gaui­do square off.

The in­volve­ment of the 'su­per­pow­ers' ramps up the ten­sion and in­creas­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sabre-rat­tling as ev­i­denced by the out­burst from the US Am­bas­sador to Port of Spain who may have thought that he was fir­ing a shot across our bow. He did not count on Dr Row­ley prompt­ly re­turn­ing fire.

Our prox­im­i­ty makes for un­der­stand­able ner­vous­ness. Hence this was a time for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to have called on Dr Row­ley and of­fered to sup­port a na­tion­al re­sponse to the Venezue­lan cri­sis.

She should have been join­ing him on the jour­ney to the Unit­ed Na­tions and Wash­ing­ton in a pow­er­ful show of diplo­mat­ic uni­ty with the CARI­COM chair­man, Dr Tim­o­thy Har­ris.

It would have been a pow­er­ful sig­nal to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, em­braced by more in­ter­ests and showed the rest of the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty how our par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy works in times of cri­sis.

In­stead, on the eve of lo­cal and na­tion­al elec­tions, we have an op­po­si­tion leader who failed to look ahead at the prospect that if she leads the next gov­ern­ment, she may have to deal with a Pres­i­dent Maduro of Venezuela, rather than Pres­i­dent Juan Guai­do.

Not even the most per­sis­tent gam­bler would bet on that. We are not even sure that there is a mark for that.