Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal has blamed En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­la­tion­ship with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, for cre­at­ing a cli­mate which led to an al­leged sit­u­a­tion in which 80 per cent of the pas­sen­gers on a Caribbean Air­lines flight to Or­lan­do, USA, were yes­ter­day sub­ject­ed to stren­u­ous sec­ondary se­cu­ri­ty screen­ing.

“That is where we’ve reached un­der Young, Hinds and Row­ley—that, to­day, in Amer­i­ca when you trav­el, you’re sub­ject­ed to sec­ondary screen­ing in the US!” Mooni­lal claimed at last night’s UNC cot­tage meet­ing at the Ch­agua­nas South Sec­ondary school.

Mooni­lal claimed Young’s trips to Venezuela con­clud­ed one week be­fore Venezuela’s elec­tion. Ask­ing what the trip was for, he asked if Young hasn’t stat­ed who he met with in Venezuela be­cause T&T had signed a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment not to dis­close the iden­ti­ty of any Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial he had met with.

In a ref­er­ence to the new Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s crack­down on il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion in the US, Mooni­lal claimed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment was “play­ing bad” and in Par­lia­ment had asked the UNC, “What Trump could do we?”

Mooni­lal added, “Well I want to tell you all some­thing to­day (Mon­day)—it start. This morn­ing (Mon­day) Caribbean Air­lines BW482 de­part­ed T&T at 8 am and ar­rived in Or­lan­do In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at more or less noon.

“That flight orig­i­nat­ed from T&T—80 per cent of the pas­sen­gers were sub­ject­ed to sec­ondary se­cu­ri­ty se­lec­tion.

“What that means is that 80 per cent of the pas­sen­gers—that is eight out of ten—were placed in spe­cial jack­ets they had to put on. They were ush­ered, cart­ed away to a se­cu­ri­ty room where they were sub­ject­ed to a much more ag­gres­sive pat down. Their lug­gage was searched again and some al­so had to un­der­take swab­bing of elec­tron­ic de­vices for ex­plo­sive residue.

“T&T, this par­adise, that is where we reach! It’s on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore that (US) gov­ern­ment de­cides that those PNM of­fi­cials and their fam­i­lies will have their visas re­voked!” he claimed.

He added, “I don’t mind that—that’s PNM and their fam­i­lies, but it will al­so in­volve or­di­nary in­no­cent cit­i­zens ... be­cause of Young, Hinds and Row­ley, you’ll be sub­ject­ed to all kinds of treat­ment that you were not be­fore, giv­en this Gov­ern­ment play­ing han­ky-panky and foot­sie with Maduro.

“That is what will hap­pen in Amer­i­can air­ports in the com­ing days and Stu­art Young and Row­ley led us there!” he claimed.

Mooni­lal, who ques­tioned why the PNM didn’t hold their 69th-an­niver­sary func­tion last Sat­ur­day at their Bal­isi­er House head of­fice in­stead of NA­PA, called for the po­lice probe and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies to probe the mys­tery ves­sel found re­cent­ly with five bod­ies aboard.