Ra­mona Ram­di­al

Ac­cord­ing to Venezuela news web­site El Pita­zo, the speed­boat bear­ing 11 pas­sen­gers which was oblit­er­at­ed by the US Navy last week, was not a cre­ation of an AI-gen­er­at­ed video (as was claimed by Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and In­for­ma­tion Fred­dy Nanez). It de­part­ed from the Venezue­lan town of San Juan de Unare, Su­cre, which was known for fish­ing un­til it was over­run by El Tren de Aragua’s drug traf­fick­ing over the last two decades. The doomed ves­sel was bound for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

El Pita­zo re­port­ed that two oth­er sim­i­lar­ly drug-laden boats had tak­en the same route but were not in­ter­cept­ed. Did the US Navy on­ly strike af­ter the fre­quen­cy of the ma­rine ac­tiv­i­ty con­firmed a “nar­co-ter­ror­ist” en­ter­prise? Are the Amer­i­cans “stand­ing their ground” in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters to pre­empt the land­ing of more il­le­gal drugs on US soil? Was the mis­sile strike a hu­man rights and/or mar­itime law vi­o­la­tion?

Our PM ful­ly en­dorsed the take­down, even urg­ing the US forces to “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly.” US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, in a sub­se­quent press con­fer­ence, laud­ed “co­op­er­a­tive gov­ern­ments” who are “gonna help us find these peo­ple and blow them up.”

Venezue­lan Min­is­ter of Pop­u­lar Pow­er for In­te­ri­or, Jus­tice and Peace Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, while in­sult­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, claims that our “fish­er­men are be­ing con­demned to ex­e­cu­tion.” I was MP for Cou­va North in 2019 when the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Or­ange Val­ley and Car­li Bay were plunged in­to mourn­ing be­cause of the high seas mur­ders of sev­en of their kin. Is Ca­bel­lo sug­gest­ing that the Amer­i­cans will ex­e­cute our sea­far­ing cit­i­zens, or is he threat­en­ing Venezue­lan ret­ri­bu­tion for our Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proval of the same Amer­i­can ag­gres­sion?

When US Sec­re­tary of State Ru­bio was con­front­ed with a ques­tion that would have been in­formed by the UN World Drug Re­port 2025 that Venezuela was not the ma­jor source of his coun­try’s drug prob­lem, he re­spond­ed, “I don’t care what the UN says. The UN doesn’t know what they’re talk­ing about.”

Is Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro re­al­ly the king­pin of the Car­tel de Los Soles? Or is it that Pres­i­dent Trump wants to check Russ­ian, Chi­nese and Iran­ian in­flu­ence in “his neck of the woods?” What does he think about Venezuela hav­ing the largest proven oil re­serves on the plan­et? “Drill, ba­by, drill!” per­haps?

In light of Sec­re­tary Ru­bio’s com­ments on our Gov­ern­ment’s co­op­er­a­tive­ness, Op­po­si­tion Pen­ne­lope Beck­les wants to know if there is “Deal or No Deal” be­tween Trin­ba­go and Un­cle Sam. She asked for trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty to the pop­u­la­tion. Many in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts have con­tin­ued to ad­vise PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar to tread care­ful­ly and reac­quire neu­tral­i­ty.

Per­haps Pres­i­dent Trump is go­ing to sign an ex­ec­u­tive or­der re­mov­ing tar­iffs on im­ports from Trin­ba­go due to our sup­port in his war on drugs. Per­haps he has con­firmed that we will be able to “drill, ba­by, drill” in the cross-bor­der gas fields in the event of “regime change.” Maybe our Prime Min­is­ter will set­tle for the “vi­o­lent” killing of those who would ex­ac­er­bate our long-fes­ter­ing crime prob­lems. Are we po­si­tioned to stay ahead re­gard­less of the whims of more pow­er­ful na­tions? Eco­nom­ic hand­cuffs may be the over­rid­ing ra­tio­nale for our gov­ern­ment’s kow­tow­ing to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. One won­ders if we had a ro­bust and di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my, if we could af­ford the lux­u­ry of non-align­ment or even re­align­ment. In­dia, the world’s largest democ­ra­cy, af­ter be­ing hit by 50 per cent tar­iffs by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion for con­tin­u­ing to pur­chase Russ­ian oil, chose not to cow­er. The Mo­di ad­min­is­tra­tion dis­played re­solve and adap­tive­ness by en­gag­ing with all at the 2025 Tian­jin SCO sum­mit, es­pe­cial­ly Chi­na and Rus­sia. Chi­na would go on to dis­play its mas­sive cut­ting-edge mil­i­tary strength dur­ing its cel­e­bra­tion of the 80th an­niver­sary of the end of WWII. Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping host­ed many world lead­ers, in­clud­ing those of Rus­sia, North Ko­rea, and Iran. Does all this spell the end of US unipo­lar­i­ty, if not a re­struc­tur­ing of the world or­der? Are we well-po­si­tioned no mat­ter what?

Maybe we are bet­ter off just fo­cus­ing on what is with­in our cir­cle of con­trol. To­day is the first day of the new school term, with po­lice of­fi­cers post­ed in cer­tain pri­or­i­ty schools. Some are even car­ry­ing guns. God for­bid that any of those guns are ever drawn, worse yet, fired in lo­ca­tions pop­u­lat­ed by mi­nors.

As a for­mer prin­ci­pal, Min­is­ter Michael Dowlath would have had to bal­ance safe­ty against se­cu­ri­ty with that call. This must be a very short-term scare tac­tic. We pre­fer the in­tro­duc­tion of lap­tops and book grants as we look for­ward to the with­draw­al of those guns, along with those “stu­dents” who have made the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­sort to des­per­ate mea­sures.

Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der’s an­nounce­ment of the clo­sure of the 200-year-old Roy­al Gaol sug­gests that there is suf­fi­cient ac­com­mo­da­tion at the Gold­en Grove Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison. Per­haps the fail­ures of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem have left many cells un­oc­cu­pied.

Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge an­nounced that there will be a joint TTPS and De­fence Force ini­tia­tive, dis­trib­uted to 25 strate­gi­cal­ly placed mo­bile units, aimed at dis­rupt­ing a “ter­ror­ist group.”

I had reg­u­lar­ly called for joint pa­trols in the crime fight when I was an MP. I still see mer­it in them. I just won­der what will be the im­pact on our youth with all those gun-tot­ing po­lice in their schools and gun-tot­ing sol­diers in their neigh­bour­hoods.