Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ab­sent from the week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, the first time she has failed to chair it since tak­ing of­fice on May 1.

Her ab­sence, ex­plained by Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John as due to a con­tin­u­ing Cab­i­net meet­ing, meant sev­er­al press­ing na­tion­al is­sues went un­ad­dressed.

One such mat­ter was the is­sue of the Venezuela im­passe and Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­fi­ant re­spons­es, which were la­belled as “crazy” by that coun­try’s Min­is­ter of In­te­ri­or and Jus­tice Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo.

Af­ter Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro claimed that ter­ror­ists at­tempt­ed to en­ter Venezuela from T&T last week, the Prime Min­is­ter re­spond­ed last Thurs­day by telling Maduro this coun­try was off-lim­its and call­ing on the Coast Guard to use ‘dead­ly force’ against any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel that en­tered T&T wa­ters from Venezuela.

Ca­bel­lo, speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence in Cara­cas Mon­day, called Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment “crazy” and de­nied the ex­is­tence of any plan to in­vade T&T’s wa­ters. Gov­ern­ment is still seek­ing in­for­ma­tion from Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties on whether a Tri­ni was among the group that was cap­tured, al­though south fish­er­men con­firmed that the man, iden­ti­fied as Gis Kendel Jheron, was in­deed a na­tion­al now liv­ing in Venezuela.

An­oth­er is­sue left unan­swered yes­ter­day was whether the State was go­ing to ap­peal the land­mark judg­ment by the Ap­peal Court which cleared the way for nine men, once ac­cused of mur­der­ing busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man, to be award­ed $2.1 mil­lion each, plus costs. Un­less the mat­ter is ap­pealed, it will be the high­est pay­out ever in the coun­try’s his­to­ry.

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein, when asked about this, said that was a mat­ter strict­ly for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and he was go­ing to “stay in his lane,” a di­rec­tive hand­ed down by Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Min­is­ters present at yes­ter­day’s brief­ing all main­tained the pos­ture of not ven­tur­ing out of their min­is­te­r­i­al lanes.

While the Prime Min­is­ter her­self stays with­in her prover­bial lane, she has en­sured at past me­dia brief­in­gs that the re­spec­tive min­is­ters an­swer ques­tions with­in their port­fo­lios. Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Ho­sein, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen and Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John were the on­ly min­is­ters present.

An­oth­er mat­ter raised was whether the nom­i­na­tion by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion for Snr Supt Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to be cho­sen as the next po­lice com­mis­sion­er will be ac­cept­ed.

Ho­sein said the mat­ter would be ad­dressed in Par­lia­ment to­day.