Gail Alexan­der

All qui­et on the Par­lia­ment front yes­ter­day pri­or to pro­ceed­ings.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young seemed un­usu­al­ly un­bur­dened, jok­ing with Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy. Port-of-Spain MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald showed no signs of be­ing wor­ried that some of her con­stituents were nabbed in re­cent po­lice raids.

And Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh shared some­thing with UNC MP Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein which sent her in­to gales of laugh­ter, telling him, "Go! Don't come back on this (Op­po­si­tion) side un­til 2020!"

Ban­ter was tem­po­rary. Min­utes af­ter the start of pro­ceed­ings, Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George was yelling "Or­der! Or­der!" when both sides butted heads dur­ing Ques­tion Time.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley was ab­sent at the time. He'd been part of this week's re­coup push on both sides; Gov­ern­ment seek­ing to bounce back on as­sort­ed is­sues in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly; the Op­po­si­tion, tweak­ing in­ter­nal pro­file.

In To­ba­go re­cent­ly, Row­ley had sought push­back on ma­jor is­sues in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly. With Young along­side on Mon­day, he'd fired a shot across po­lice lead­er­ship bows, voic­ing dis­may about at­tacks on tourists and the crime de­tec­tion rate. A less than sub­tle prompt to po­lice/lead­er­ship, es­pe­cial­ly with re­cent homi­cide spike and a mur­der toll of 69 as T&T's na­tion­al fete—and ex­pand­ed vis­i­tor­ship—ap­proach­es. The need to get a han­dle on the prob­lem in To­ba­go es­pe­cial­ly has in­creased fol­low­ing Row­ley's an­nounce­ment of ma­ri­na plans. Fol­low­ing his blan­ket “bouff”, it was hard­ly sur­pris­ing po­lice leapt in­to ac­tion with a rash of raids.

The To­ba­go vis­it—whether part of elec­tion prep or not—al­lowed Row­ley to mon­i­tor par­tic­u­lar­ly progress on projects in To­ba­go East where his par­ty's re­port­ed­ly weak. It al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ed out­reach on oth­er To­ba­go is­sues from the be­lea­guered fer­ry ser­vice (with the promise of more fer­ries) to the failed San­dals (dit­to, ma­ri­na re­place­ment). Row­ley's tack on the ma­ri­na has been to “take in front” and urge PNM troops to de­fend the new plans lest an­oth­er fail­ure oc­curs.

His meet­ing was al­so geared to­ward re­in­force­ment of T&T's im­age on Venezuela is­sues in­to which T&T's been drawn clos­er—and up per­son­al­ly—re­cent­ly. Row­ley shared his dim view of OAS sec­re­tary gen­er­al Luis Al­ma­gro's par­ti­san stance in the mat­ter and de­liv­ered cer­tain quipped jabs at Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly deputy Car­los Valero— As­sem­bly head Juan Guai­do's proxy—fol­low­ing Valero's re­cent re­jec­tion of Row­ley.

How his brief re­marks on Valero will go over in Guai­do's camp and whether it'll com­pound neg­a­tive per­cep­tion about the Gov­ern­ment as a pro-Nico­las Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion—re­cent­ly voiced by Valero—re­mains to un­fold.

Af­ter Row­ley spoke Tues­day, Valero on Wednes­day dis­missed Cari­com's Mon­te­v­ideo Mech­a­nism for peace­ful Venezue­lan res­o­lu­tion as “na­cio muer­to" (still­born) and "go­ing nowhere”.

Row­ley ac­knowl­edged Venezuela is the most chal­leng­ing for­eign pol­i­cy is­sue T&T's been called up­on to deal with. Whether or not T&T's found want­i­ng—as he be­lieves it won't—the is­sues may be out of re­gion­al hands since Guai­do has set what ap­pears to be a col­li­sion course with em­bat­tled Maduro with Guai­do's Feb­ru­ary 23 bid to open a “hu­man­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dor” to bring in US aid blocked by Maduro at Colom­bia's bor­der. Cu­ba's warned the US was “se­cret­ly mov­ing spe­cial forces clos­er to Venezuela to in­ter­vene un­der the pre­text of a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis". On the heels of that, came Maduro's Thurs­day an­nounce­ment that his of­fi­cials held talks with US of­fi­cials this week. But US sig­nals haven't con­veyed any bend­ing about the need for Maduro's ex­it.

T&T's, how­ev­er, prepar­ing for any even­tu­al­i­ty. Valero had com­plained T&T was diss­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid for Venezue­lans. But the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry since Feb­ru­ary 4 was un­der­tak­ing a UK-as­sist­ed work­shop (con­clud­ing yes­ter­day) on hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid and dis­as­ter man­age­ment. How much such ex­per­tise will be need­ed, re­mains to be seen.

Venezuela's is­sue will as­sume greater sig­nif­i­cance for T&T's Op­po­si­tion fol­low­ing Valero's crit­i­cisms. UNC's La Hor­quet­ta meet­ing on Mon­day at­tract­ed what UNC of­fi­cials de­scribed as a “gen­er­al elec­tion crowd” which may sig­nal the mea­sure of mo­bil­i­sa­tion suc­cess con­stituen­cy co-or­di­na­tor Jear­lean John's had. Nor is the Op­po­si­tion de­lay­ing elec­tion plan­ning, judg­ing from Thurs­day's meet­ing with Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion. Re­spec­tive PNM and UNC re­coup will height­en over the com­ing months. Just how much work will be need­ed on Venezuela and oth­er is­sues—for both—re­main ahead.