Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) have slammed Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and his pre­de­ces­sor, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, for their “close­ness” with the Nico­las Maduro regime in Venezuela.

The UNC’s prospec­tive can­di­date for Barataria/San Juan Sad­dam Ho­sein and COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har spoke about the is­sue yes­ter­day, as Prime Min­is­ter Young met with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Ja­maica as part of his vis­it to that coun­try.

Yes­ter­day, the US Em­bassy re­leased in­for­ma­tion on a State De­part­ment brief­ing on Ru­bio’s trip. US State De­part­ment spokesper­son Tam­my Bruce said Ru­bio was sig­nalling pri­ori­tis­ing “the re­gion we call home.” Bruce said when the Caribbean pros­pers, the US pros­pers. She spoke of col­lab­o­ra­tion on se­cu­ri­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly to dis­rupt nar­cotics and firearms traf­fick­ing and com­bat­ting transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

The US Spe­cial En­voy for Latin Amer­i­ca, Mauri­cio Claver-Carone, said the his­toric op­por­tu­ni­ty in the sit­u­a­tion was for en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean to im­prove lives, op­por­tu­ni­ties and the re­la­tion­ship with the US.

Speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing at the UNC’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Ho­sein said Young was “prob­a­bly in Ja­maica de­fend­ing state­ments and his ac­tions and his con­duct over the last 10 years with re­spect to his re­la­tion­ship with the Maduro regime and that of Del­cy Ro­driguez.”

“We wait to hear what is the out­come of that meet­ing be­tween Mr Young and US Sec­re­tary of State Ru­bio with re­spect to that par­tic­u­lar mat­ter,” Ho­sein added.

On the UNC’s ex­pec­ta­tions, Ho­sein said, “We wish the best for T&T and we as the Op­po­si­tion al­ways gave a com­mit­ment to main­tain strong bi­lat­er­al ties with the US. How­ev­er, we’ve seen over the past few years—which we’d re­peat­ed­ly warned the Gov­ern­ment of their close­ness and re­la­tion­ship with the Maduro regime, which is clear­ly frowned up­on by the new US ad­min­is­tra­tion. Com­ing out of those meet­ings, all we do is wish the best for T&T.”

Ra­mad­har—Al­ter­na­tive to Drag­on Gas need­ed

Mean­while, COP leader Ra­mad­har, who al­so hoped for the best for this coun­try from the meet­ing, said, “Our blood­line econ­o­my has been hinged on oil and gas. We all know now the dire straits we’re in con­cern­ing their pro­duc­tion. There’s al­ways a pos­si­bil­i­ty of suc­cess but the like­li­hood is grim that T&T may ben­e­fit from Drag­on gas.

“There­fore, has there been any ne­go­ti­a­tions with Guyana or Suri­name, both of which T&T has had friend­ly re­la­tions with for­ev­er? It was dis­turb­ing to see that Guyana was in­tent on ex­port­ing its oil pro­duc­tion to the US for re­fin­ing, then hav­ing it brought back to Guyana,” he said.

Ra­mad­har added, “Our re­fin­ery was closed in 2018. But the knowl­edge of Guyana’s re­serves es­pe­cial­ly has been known for years be­fore. Was there any ef­fort to part­ner with Guyana from the ini­tial stage to to­day, as our re­fin­ery has the ca­pac­i­ty to do far more than what was avail­able to it. It’s not too late to hold these ne­go­ti­a­tions if they haven’t al­ready be­gun.”

Ra­mad­har said he hasn’t heard much of that, “but it’s an ob­vi­ous choice.”

“If Drag­on gas is to fail, we must have re­sources avail­able to us and if Guyana, our friend­ly neigh­bour has this, then we should tap in­to that with all vigour that we have, which re­quires very qual­i­ty diplo­ma­cy.

“I don’t know if we have the ca­pac­i­ty to do it at this time but we must have that ne­go­ti­a­tions be­gun and con­clud­ed as soon as it’s pos­si­ble for the vi­a­bil­i­ty not just of T&T but the re­gion it­self. I’ll look for­ward to a new dis­pen­sa­tion deal­ing with those is­sues.”

Ra­mad­har ques­tioned how T&T be­lieved the Guyanese feel about Venezuela threat­en­ing to take their ter­ri­to­ry and how they may feel about the “close, warm re­la­tion­ship” T&T has shown to Maduro’s regime.

“A dic­ta­tor­ship that sup­press­es its peo­ple, when our mon­ey com­ing from the Drag­on deal—if it had come to fruition—would have pos­si­bly fi­nanced the war against Guyana,” Ra­mad­har claimed.