Raphael John-Lall

In one of his strongest ver­bal at­tacks to date against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo has ac­cused her of align­ing her­self with the Unit­ed States’ “bel­liger­ent plans” against Venezuela.

Ca­bel­lo, a key al­ly of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, made the com­ments on Wednes­day night dur­ing his week­ly tele­vi­sion pro­gramme Con El Ma­zo Dan­do. He al­so claimed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar—who has now been banned from en­ter­ing Venezuela—is caus­ing “dam­age” to T&T.

“What’s hap­pen­ing in T&T is pa­thet­ic,” Ca­bel­lo said.

“The Prime Min­is­ter of T&T lives in a state of drunk­en ef­fer­ves­cence every day and doesn’t re­alise the dam­age she is do­ing to the peo­ple.”

Ca­bel­lo al­leged that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s “mis­guid­ed ac­tions” have en­abled Guyana’s gov­ern­ment and US en­er­gy com­pa­ny Exxon­Mo­bil to ad­vance their goal of mo­nop­o­lis­ing the re­gion­al gas in­dus­try and sidelin­ing T&T.

“I said it here on Sep­tem­ber 17—what was be­hind that is the gas war,” he said.

“Why are they putting Trinidad in front of Venezuela? Be­cause Guyana and Exxon­Mo­bil want to keep the gas busi­ness and get Trinidad and To­ba­go out.”

His re­marks came days af­ter Pres­i­dent Maduro an­nounced that Venezuela was sus­pend­ing all gas deals with T&T, ac­cus­ing Port-of-Spain of col­lab­o­rat­ing with Wash­ing­ton to desta­bilise Cara­cas and oust the cur­rent regime.

Ca­bel­lo fur­ther al­leged that “US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio” is pres­sur­ing T&T to cede ter­ri­to­ry for the pur­pose of stag­ing an at­tack on Venezuela—a claim for which he pro­vid­ed no ev­i­dence.

He al­so ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of “falling in­to a trap” and lend­ing her­self to what he de­scribed as a “false flag op­er­a­tion” in­tend­ed to jus­ti­fy po­ten­tial US mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion against the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela.

For her part, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­tin­u­al­ly de­nied the claims made by the Maduro regime and says her Gov­ern­ment main­tains its cor­dial re­la­tion­ship with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.