Renu­ka Singh

“You are a trai­tor la­dy.”

This was the ac­cu­sa­tion Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley lev­elled against Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day, as he ac­cused her of con­spir­ing to get the Unit­ed States to sanc­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go over a fu­el deal em­a­nat­ing from this coun­try which may have even­tu­al­ly Venezuela.

At a me­dia brief­ing ear­li­er in the day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­duced a man­i­fest from the March 27 flight that brought Venezue­lan Vice-pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez to the coun­try for a brief meet­ing. Ac­cord­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ex­ec­u­tives from the Venezue­lan-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny, PDVSA ac­com­pa­nied Ro­driguez and were in the meet­ing with the PM.

She queried whether the T&T Gov­ern­ment had had talks on the Paria Fu­el Com­pa­ny fu­el deal dur­ing that meet­ing al­though it was an­nounced Ro­driguez had come to dis­cuss COVID-19-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Dur­ing a hasti­ly called press con­fer­ence on the is­sue, in be­tween the Par­lia­ment sit­ting, Row­ley said, “The meet­ing took place at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, on the Trinidad side, we had (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) Min­is­ter (Stu­art) Young, (For­eign Af­fairs) Min­is­ter (Den­nis) Moses, my­self and ac­tu­al­ly she did not dis­cuss be­fore, the de­tails of what she want­ed to talk about,” Row­ley said.

He said while Ro­driguez came with a del­e­ga­tion, no one was in­tro­duced to him be­fore, dur­ing or af­ter the meet­ing which they all at­tend­ed.

“Present with her, I am now dis­cov­er­ing was some per­son called As­dur­bal Chavez, who I am now dis­cov­er­ing is part of the com­mis­sion that worked on the PDVSA re­struc­tur­ing,” the PM said.

Row­ley was re­fer­ring to As­dur­bal Jose Chavez Jiminez, who was ap­point­ed pres­i­dent of PDVSA on April 28. Jiminez is al­so the cousin of late Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez.

“No­body in the meet­ing was in­tro­duced to us as pres­i­dent of PDVSA and I can con­firm now that at that meet­ing on that day that no pres­i­dent of PDVSA was there,” he said, not­ing Jiminez was ap­point­ed af­ter the meet­ing took place.

“I am dis­cov­er­ing now that sub­se­quent to that meet­ing, that in­di­vid­ual had been pro­mot­ed but on that day, March 27, no per­son was in­tro­duced as pres­i­dent of PDVSA nor to the best of our knowl­edge was the pres­i­dent of PDVSA.

“There was an in­di­vid­ual on some com­mis­sion for PDVSA re­struc­tur­ing, I am dis­cov­er­ing that now.”

Row­ley said half of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day was cen­tred on the plane that was al­lowed to en­ter the coun­try.

“An air­craft that was sanc­tioned by the Unit­ed States, but let me just say this, the Venezue­lan pres­i­den­cy has been to T&T on many oc­ca­sions, com­ing on a pres­i­den­tial air­craft, not by com­mer­cial trav­el.

“I have nev­er asked and I have nev­er been told and I don’t know if it’s the pro­to­col to find from the pres­i­dent or the pres­i­den­cy what air­craft they com­ing on, what is the air­craft num­ber,” he said.

Row­ley said once the Gov­ern­ment gave ap­proval for the plan to al­low Ro­driguez to en­ter T&T’s closed bor­ders, the land­ing be­came a mat­ter for Civ­il Avi­a­tion.

“As far as I am aware, I know noth­ing nor did any­body in my del­e­ga­tion know any­thing about a par­tic­u­lar air­craft,” Row­ley said.

“We now dis­cov­er­ing this to­day by the great amount of work done by the Op­po­si­tion in try­ing to fu­el Amer­i­can anger. We dis­cov­er­ing to­day that the air­craft that came in, to­day, a Venezue­lan air­craft, which we ex­pect­ed is a PDVSA air­craft which was sanc­tioned by the US and there­fore this was grounds for the Op­po­si­tion leader to be call­ing down fire and brim­stone on the head of T&T.”

Row­ley said Trinidad and To­ba­go al­lows all kinds of pri­vate and gov­ern­men­tal air­craft to en­ter the coun­try. He said most re­cent­ly, bor­der re­stric­tions were lift­ed to al­low two pri­vate planes owned by in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies to en­ter the coun­try.

“We don’t ask who owns the jets, that is a mat­ter for Civ­il Avi­a­tion,” he re­it­er­at­ed.