Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is again deny­ing that there is any rift be­tween this coun­try and Venezuela and is even go­ing so far as to blame the me­dia for man­u­fac­tur­ing the il­lu­sion of a rift.

Speak­ing with the me­dia yes­ter­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, the Prime Min­is­ter said she was

con­fi­dent US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio will ho­n­our his com­mit­ment to grant Trinidad and To­ba­go an OFAC li­cense to op­er­ate in the Drag­on gas field, but ad­mit­ted she cur­rent­ly has no de­tails on the li­cense it­self.

Af­ter a high-lev­el meet­ing last Tues­day in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Sec­re­tary Ru­bio pub­licly sup­port­ed the ap­proval of new, rel­e­vant OFAC li­cences.

An OFAC (Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol) li­cence from the US Trea­sury is vi­tal, as it grants le­gal clear­ance for trans­ac­tions that would oth­er­wise be barred un­der US eco­nom­ic and trade sanc­tions.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter if par­tic­u­lars were dis­cussed, such as when the li­cence would be is­sued and how long it would be for?

“Soon, well, I can tell you soon. No date time frame was giv­en, but I think we both un­der­stood the ur­gency of the mat­ter. So that is one step in a two-step process that we have to go through. The sec­ond step would be our li­cence with Venezuela. I am told that we had a 30-year li­cence from Venezuela. But of course, giv­en all that has tran­spired, we will have some more ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed yes­ter­day that she had a meet­ing sched­uled with a Shell rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

“Shell is in­volved in that project and in­deed, I am meet­ing Mr Lo­max from Shell in a short while to see what progress they have made.

“Be­fore this hap­pened with the Unit­ed States, Shell had gone to Venezuela. They had dis­cus­sions with Madame Del­cy (Del­cy Ro­driguez) about the li­cence, and I won’t get up­dates from him as well be­cause Shell will have to speak with of­fi­cials in Venezuela.”

But she said, so far, she had not reached out to Venezue­lan of­fi­cials on the mat­ter. “So no, I have not reached out of­fi­cial­ly, but there have been un­of­fi­cial reach­ing out by mem­bers of our team.”

How­ev­er, when pressed about ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela fol­low­ing the “back and forth” with the South Amer­i­can coun­try in re­cent times, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the US de­ployed a mil­i­tary pres­ence near Venezue­lan wa­ters, the Prime Min­is­ter said there was no rift.

She ac­cused the me­dia of play­ing a role in those per­ceived ten­sions.

“We have noth­ing against the peo­ple of Venezuela. I have re­peat­ed­ly said we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Venezuela. So this back and forth, I think, has been cre­at­ed as a false nar­ra­tive that I cuss them up and they cuss me up. No, I think one gen­er­al said such things. Peo­ple have per­son­al­i­ties. I can’t re­mem­ber his name now. He said some­thing about me. You all ask me about it. I’m not both­ered.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “Peo­ple have dif­fer­ent opin­ions. But again, I re­peat, we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Venezuela. This project will ben­e­fit Venezuela.”

Asked again if she recog­nised Nicholas Maduro as the le­git­i­mate Pres­i­dent of Venezuela, the Prime Min­is­ter again re­fused to an­swer the ques­tion.

“That ques­tion does not arise with the great­est of re­spect. Da­reece (Po­lo) asked me that last Wednes­day night. The ques­tion does not arise. Can you ask me an­oth­er one, please? “

When Guardian Me­dia pressed her on the mat­ter, the Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “It does not arise from me. What are you go­ing to force me to an­swer you?”

In 2019, while in Op­po­si­tion, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress had fa­mous­ly de­clared its sup­port for Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly head Juan Guai­do as in­ter­im pres­i­dent and called for fresh elec­tions in Venezuela su­per­vised by in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers.

“We’re prepar­ing to join with the Venezue­lan peo­ple and the free world in recog­nis­ing Juan Guai­do,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said then as op­po­si­tion leader in Par­lia­ment at the time.

All she would say, though, is that her Gov­ern­ment would be ap­point­ing a new Am­bas­sador to Venezuela.

“Cer­tain­ly, we are in the process.”