The ex­pla­na­tions giv­en by the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, must be dif­fi­cult to swal­low even for the most fer­vent and blind fol­low­ers of the PNM.

The Vice Pres­i­dent of Venezuela vis­it­ed T&T un­der very sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances, where the Pres­i­dent of Venezuela was in­dict­ed on drug re­lat­ed charges, the day just be­fore the vis­it. The ship­ment of oil oc­curred the day af­ter the vis­it and then it be­came ev­i­dent, that the vice pres­i­dent was not alone as pre­sent­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter.

Sev­er­al peo­ple who were for­mer mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment, have ex­haus­tive­ly out­lined the pro­to­col for these vis­its. There were no min­utes nor notes.

The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty clear­ly found him­self be­ing the cen­tre of nui­sance, hav­ing to som­er­sault, dodge, wrig­gle and play hide and seek there­after. He quick­ly re­sort­ed to the op­ti­mistic hope that Trinida­di­ans are not dis­cern­ing and there­fore ‘’this shall quick­ly pass’’.

His ex­pla­na­tion was au­then­tic, just as the founder and leader of the PNM and first Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Dr Er­ic Williams who fought for in­de­pen­dence.

The Prime Min­is­ter, prob­a­bly hop­ing to beat the lev­el of deep­en­ing il­log­ic from his blun­der­ing and ir­re­spon­si­ble min­is­ter, found him­self days lat­er, com­ing up with the ex­pla­na­tion that the vis­it was about Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, per­tain­ing to the COVID-19 virus but not about the “ bi­o­log­i­cal na­ture” of the virus it­self (or some­thing like that).

He al­so pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that he had no knowl­edge of who the oth­ers were, that at­tend­ed the meet­ing and that he can­not re­veal the dis­cus­sions that were held. This clear­ly shows the ig­no­rance of trans­paren­cy and to­tal dis­re­spect to us the cit­i­zens.

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty dis­cus­sions are clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion, but yet you do not know who at­tend­ed the meet­ing?

As­sum­ing this is in­deed the case, then there is a se­ri­ous mis judg­ment and mis­han­dling of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, which places the coun­try in a very vul­ner­a­ble and un­civilised po­si­tion.

The oth­er ir­re­spon­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, was that one of the at­ten­dees present at the meet­ing, had be­come the Vice Pres­i­dent of the now PDVSA, weeks af­ter the meet­ing, seek­ing to jus­ti­fy that he wasn’t in the said po­si­tion at the time of the meet­ing.

With the above analy­sis of the now “fu­el gate fi­as­co,” in any or­gan­i­sa­tion, be it macro or mi­cro en­ter­prise, there is al­ways a pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion, where there is a han­dover process.

Some­times, past pres­i­dents may very well sit in on the board to over­see the tran­si­tion and en­sure that there is a smooth han­dover. Dur­ing han­dovers and tra­di­tion­al process­es, there is an ex­change of in­for­ma­tion per­ti­nent to the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

So, my ques­tions are what per­ti­nence did this vis­it present and whose in­ter­est did it serve?

In any oth­er civilised coun­try, the pub­lic would have pushed for ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, where all those in­volved, would have been asked to re­sign with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.