DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cused Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of at­tempt­ing to sour the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and Venezuela’s ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der Nicolás Maduro, while al­so con­demn­ing her con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

Row­ley point­ed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s mes­sage fol­low­ing Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion on Jan­u­ary 20, in which she not on­ly con­grat­u­lat­ed the new pres­i­dent but al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to crit­i­cise his pre­de­ces­sor, pres­i­dent Joe Biden. Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed Biden’s ad­min­is­tra­tion as a “dis­as­ter” that was too far left and “woke”.

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, this be­hav­iour is part of a broad­er strat­e­gy by the Op­po­si­tion to un­der­mine the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to serve the peo­ple of T&T. He be­lieves the Op­po­si­tion is at­tempt­ing to harm the Gov­ern­ment’s stand­ing in the run-up to the next elec­tion.

“It is ex­act­ly that which is hap­pen­ing why the Op­po­si­tion UNC has come out so ob­scene­ly and vul­gar­ly and at­tached it­self to the po­lit­i­cal cam­paign of an Amer­i­can po­lit­i­cal par­ty to pro­voke the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent and the Gov­ern­ment there to pre­vent them from co­op­er­at­ing with Trinidad and To­ba­go in the oil and gas busi­ness,” Row­ley said.

He con­demned Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­marks about Biden as an “em­bar­rass­ment” and a “dis­grace” to T&T, ques­tion­ing why she felt the need to pan­der to for­eign pol­i­tics for ac­cep­tance.

Row­ley quot­ed for­mer Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter and Caribbean cham­pi­on, Er­rol Bar­row, who said, “We are friends of all and satel­lites of none.”

Reaf­firm­ing his gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion, Row­ley em­pha­sised that his ad­min­is­tra­tion ad­heres to the prin­ci­ples of non-in­ter­fer­ence and non-in­ter­ven­tion in for­eign pol­i­tics.

“We work with gov­ern­ments, not po­lit­i­cal par­ties, when strik­ing deals,” Row­ley stat­ed.

He al­so crit­i­cised lo­cal po­lit­i­cal fig­ures who, in his view, be­lieve that gain­ing recog­ni­tion means “gen­u­flect­ing” or “pros­trat­ing your­self in front of some­body who doesn’t even know you.”

Re­gard­ing Venezuela, Row­ley not­ed, “It doesn’t mat­ter which par­ty puts sanc­tions on Venezuela be­cause both par­ties in Wash­ing­ton put sanc­tions on Venezuela.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Row­ley point­ed to what he per­ceived as de­lib­er­ate ef­forts by the UNC to un­der­mine the gov­ern­ment’s ini­tia­tives. He re­called Per­sad-Bisses­sar writ­ing to the Aus­tralian Op­po­si­tion and their at­tor­ney gen­er­al, lob­by­ing for in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Row­ley’s re­la­tion­ship with a ship­build­ing com­pa­ny. He said this was an at­tempt to block the na­tion from ac­quir­ing four ves­sels—two fer­ries and two coast guard ships.

Row­ley al­so high­light­ed the Op­po­si­tion’s re­jec­tion of the San­dals pro­pos­al, which he ar­gued has proven suc­cess­ful for neigh­bour­ing St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, where tourism has surged to a record 104,000 vis­i­tors.

“You know what is caus­ing that? The To­ba­go San­dals!” Row­ley as­sert­ed.