Raphael John-Lall

For the sec­ond time in weeks, protests against T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have erupt­ed in Venezuela.

On Mon­day night in the city of Cumaná, Gov­er­nor of Su­cre state Jo­han­na Car­ril­lo led a ral­ly that in­clud­ed mem­bers of Venezuela’s rul­ing So­cial­ist Par­ty (PSUV) and the coun­try’s mil­i­tary.

Car­ril­lo said the protest was part of the sec­ond shift of a demon­stra­tion called by Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro to re­ject what he de­scribed as new “im­pe­ri­al­ist threats” fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of joint mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es be­tween T&T and the Unit­ed States.

These protests come as Pres­i­dent Maduro, for the sec­ond time in days, warned the T&T gov­ern­ment of po­ten­tial con­se­quences for host­ing US forces for joint op­er­a­tions from No­vem­ber 16 to 21.

“We are cur­rent­ly in the sec­ond shift with the Com­mu­nal Mil­i­tary Unit, which is from this com­mune of the His­toric Cen­ter, made up of 100 com­rades. In ad­di­tion, com­rades from neigh­bour­ing in­sti­tu­tions have joined this great vig­il at the high­est point in Cumaná, the San An­to­nio de la Em­i­nen­cia Cas­tle,” Car­ril­lo said.

She added that pro­test­ers would re­main gath­ered un­til Tues­day, from the cap­i­tal of Su­cre, to safe­guard peace and de­fend na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.

“From this cas­tle, you can see 360 de­grees of the en­tire city, which un­doubt­ed­ly pro­vides a great view. I am ac­com­pa­nied here by Vice Ad­mi­ral Án­gel Rivero, com­man­der of the east­ern mil­i­tary zone, as well as the may­or of Cumaná, Pe­dro Figueroa, and most im­por­tant­ly, the Com­mu­ni­ty Mili­tia Units,” the gov­er­nor said.

Oth­er Venezue­lan of­fi­cials have con­tin­ued to crit­i­cise T&T’s sup­port for the US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean.

May­or of the Guaicaipuro mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty in Mi­ran­da state, Farith Frai­ja Nor­wood, con­demned Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion, ar­gu­ing that au­tho­ris­ing the in­stal­la­tion of a for­eign mil­i­tary force on T&T ter­ri­to­ry threat­ens the peace of the Caribbean.

Dur­ing an ap­pear­ance on the pro­gramme Aquí y Aho­ra on Laigua­na.tv, host­ed by jour­nal­ist Julio Ri­obó, Nor­wood em­pha­sised that T&T has his­tor­i­cal­ly been an al­lied coun­try with­in Cari­com. He warned that the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sions could neg­a­tive­ly af­fect the pop­u­la­tion of T&T.

“What will hap­pen is a de­cline in the qual­i­ty of life for those who live in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This could desta­bilise the po­lit­i­cal or­der in the coun­try due to these poor de­ci­sions, which, it seems, have on­ly ben­e­fit­ed the Prime Min­is­ter,” he said.