Last Thurs­day, De­mo­c­rat US Sen­a­tor Tim Kaine in­tro­duced a res­o­lu­tion to the US Con­gress, “to di­rect the re­moval of Unit­ed States Armed Forces from hos­til­i­ties with­in or against Venezuela that have not been au­tho­rised by Con­gress”. It was shot down 49-51. Ear­li­er in the week, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s deep New York­er roots would have felt the burn of self-pro­claimed De­mo­c­ra­t­ic So­cial­ist Zohran Mam­dani’s elec­tion as May­or of New York City. This would have re­dou­bled his re­solve to reg­is­ter wins in his ac­tive cam­paigns. The USS Ger­ald R Ford Car­ri­er Strike Group is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Cari­com’s “Zone of Peace” by the end of the week. It moves men­ac­ing­ly with Venezuela in its sights. When it fi­nal­ly ar­rives. How long will it stay? Will it leave with­out fir­ing a shot? Will it aid Ja­maica in the af­ter­math of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa? Will it pro­vide surg­eries and school field trips, as was re­cent­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the USS Grave­ly? I doubt that Pres­i­dent Trump and US Sec­re­tary of War Hegseth de­ployed the largest air­craft car­ri­er in the world to Venezuela’s doorstep for the sake of peace.

Trin­bag­o­ni­ans re­main wary. A few days ago, sev­er­al schools and busi­ness­es closed ear­ly based on ru­mours left in the wake of mo­bil­i­sa­tion com­mands re­ceived by De­fence Force, Coast Guard, and TTPS of­fi­cers. That same day, our Par­lia­ment ex­tend­ed the State of Emer­gency, and many won­dered if a US in­va­sion of Venezuela was im­mi­nent. Pres­i­dent Trump has de­nied this but still says that Maduro’s “days are num­bered.” Per­haps he hopes that Maduro will ca­pit­u­late be­fore the USS Ger­ald R Ford rais­es the stakes any high­er. Maduro’s “Ven App” has been re­pur­posed for Venezue­lans to whistle­blow for any “sedi­tious” or “dis­loy­al” ac­tiv­i­ty. Will this give rise to more hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions? Will Pres­i­dent Trump be sat­is­fied with Pres­i­dent Maduro ex­iled, im­pris­oned, or killed? Pres­i­dent Trump met with Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi in a side meet­ing at last month’s APEC sum­mit in South Ko­rea. They ne­go­ti­at­ed a 10% re­duc­tion in the tar­iffs im­posed on Chi­nese im­ports, amongst oth­er things. Has Trump neu­tralised a pow­er­ful Maduro regime al­ly? An IL-76 trans­port plane linked to the Russ­ian Mil­i­tary and the Wag­n­er mer­ce­nary group has been spot­ted in Cara­cas. Avi­a­con Zitro­trans, the air­craft’s op­er­a­tor, has been sanc­tioned by sev­er­al democ­ra­cies for de­liv­er­ing arms to con­flict zones. I doubt Pres­i­dent Putin’s pack­age can re­pel what cur­rent­ly stalks Venezuela, and def­i­nite­ly not what’s on the way. The high lev­el of GPS in­ter­fer­ence de­tect­ed in parts of Venezuela and Trinidad by the gp­s­jam.com web­site a day be­fore the de­par­ture of the USS Grave­ly has height­ened sus­pi­cions. 

Ca­lyp­sos from the Mighty Spar­row and Lord In­vad­er tell us about the Amer­i­can oc­cu­pa­tion of Trinidad dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Many of us weren’t born then, and we still can’t imag­ine a se­ri­ous in­ter­na­tion­al con­flict in our re­gion. I hope and pray that there will be none. What will the US gov­ern­ment need to achieve be­fore it re­calls its war ma­chines?

Our Prime Min­is­ter has de­scribed Cari­com as an “un­re­li­able part­ner,” be­liev­ing that they have tak­en Venezuela’s side in the cur­rent con­flict. Con­se­quent­ly, she has men­tioned re­la­tion­ships be­yond Cari­com. This did not stop her from send­ing aid to Ja­maica af­ter the dev­as­ta­tion of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa. In 2019, the then UNC op­po­si­tion leader had sup­port­ed Juan Guai­do as the in­ter­im Pres­i­dent of Venezuela. He was recog­nised as Venezuela’s right­ful Pres­i­dent by many na­tions at the time. He is now in ex­ile. So too is Ed­mun­do Gon­za­lez Ur­ru­tia, who was be­lieved to have won the 2024 Venezue­lan pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. If Maduro won’t demit of­fice via de­mo­c­ra­t­ic chan­nels, how else will he go? Should he go? Venezuela pos­sess­es the great­est oil re­serves on the plan­et, ahead of Sau­di Ara­bia, yet Venezue­lan ba­bies are beg­ging on many of our streets. Does Pres­i­dent Maduro know this? Is this char­ac­ter­is­tic of a wealthy na­tion? What are our own Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty and Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion do­ing about this? The pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment did noth­ing ei­ther. Ba­bies who beg will be traf­ficked, no mat­ter their na­tion­al­i­ty! Would a Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent in the form of Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do dis­play greater sym­pa­thy?

 Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s vis­it to To­ba­go last week was her first since re­claim­ing the prime min­is­ter­ship. She took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hand-de­liv­er an ex­port li­cence for quar­ry op­er­a­tions at Stud­ley Park to Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine. This opens up a bil­lion-dol­lar op­por­tu­ni­ty for To­ba­go. Just last month, To­ba­go re­ceived its largest-ever bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion of $3.724 bil­lion. Is this a pre­lude to the grant­i­ng of in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment? The To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill 2021 was passed, but the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment) Bill, 2020, lies in par­lia­men­tary abeyance. I had the priv­i­lege of work­ing on those Bills. I look for­ward to the re­lay­ing and pas­sage of the com­pan­ion bill.

 The Gov­ern­ment launched its am­bi­tious Trinidad and To­ba­go Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print last Thurs­day. The pre­sen­ta­tion of the “Plaza San Car­los” to the “Health City South” in San Fer­nan­do and “Fore­shore res­i­dences” to Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah up­grades in Port-of-Spain were im­pres­sive. How­ev­er, the plans for a “Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus” in Ch­agua­nas and oth­er projects through­out Trinidad will be rev­o­lu­tion­ary. Will the Gov­ern­ment re­al­ly de­liv­er these projects in phase one, over the next 5 years? Will they cre­ate those 50,000 jobs? How are we go­ing to pay for all this?