Ra­mona Ram­di­al

2025 end­ed with US Pres­i­dent Trump’s ar­ma­da swarm­ing in­to Cari­com’s “Zone of Peace” to res­cue us from the nar­coter­ror­ism of Tren de Aragua and Car­tel de Los Soles. 2026 be­gan with “Op­er­a­tion Ab­solute Re­solve’s” clin­i­cal ex­fil­tra­tion of Nico­las Maduro and his wife. That morn­ing, I felt thrilled. I imag­ined free and fair elec­tions in Venezuela with No­bel Lau­re­ate María Co­ri­na Macha­do and Ed­mun­do González Ur­ru­tia be­ing in­vit­ed to run a care­tak­er gov­ern­ment: Democ­ra­cy in Venezuela, re­al­ly.

Of course, as a sup­port­er of our Prime Min­is­ter’s “Trinidad and To­ba­go First” pol­i­cy, I dreamed of the res­ur­rec­tion and even ac­cel­er­a­tion of our na­tion’s en­er­gy agree­ments with Venezuela. Am I still dream­ing though? Did Trump mere­ly de­cap­i­tate a Hy­dra? Was it nev­er about drugs? Is the “Maduro regime” and the “Ro­driguez regime” the same thing? Trump now be­lieves that Macha­do doesn’t have the “sup­port” or “re­spect” and the “nar­coter­rror­ist boat strikes” have been re­placed by “oil tanker seizures.”

At his Mar-a-La­go press con­fer­ence mere hours af­ter the Delta Force’s cap­ture of the Maduros, Pres­i­dent Trump an­nounced that Maduro’s Vice-Pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­driguez, had been “sworn in” as in­ter­im Pres­i­dent of Venezuela. He al­so said that his ad­min­is­tra­tion was go­ing to “run” that coun­try. This was a suck­er punch to democ­ra­cy. Trump al­so con­firmed that US oil com­pa­nies were go­ing to “take a tremen­dous amount of wealth out of the ground” and that 30 mil­lion to 50 mil­lion bar­rels of oil would be sold by the US to “ben­e­fit the peo­ple of Venezuela”. Exxon­Mo­bil and Cono­coPhillips would be at the front of the line to re­cov­er their in­ter­ests af­ter they were run off by Maduro’s pre­de­ces­sor, Hugo Chavez, two decades ago. This is where I see po­ten­tial ben­e­fit for all, in­clud­ing our na­tion.

How­ev­er, Pres­i­dent Ro­driguez, pri­or to her el­e­va­tion, had an­nounced the sus­pen­sion of Venezue­lan en­er­gy arrange­ments with our coun­try due to per­ceived sup­port of US ag­gres­sion to­wards the Maduro regime. Venezue­lan In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo is an­oth­er fig­ure who has re­mained in of­fice. He has been par­tic­u­lar­ly threat­en­ing to our Prime Min­is­ter and coun­try. If they are now work­ing with the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, shouldn’t this tem­per their ap­proach? Will they hold a grudge where they can? An­oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion is how the Maduros were so eas­i­ly tracked and ex­tract­ed. Could there be a US$50 mil­lion Maduro boun­ty in a for­eign bank ac­count of a mem­ber of the new Ro­driguez regime? Was Gen­er­al Javier Mar­cano Tá­ba­ta just a “fall guy’ with his ar­rest as leader of Maduro’s de­feat­ed Pres­i­den­tial Ho­n­our Guard?

To our PM’s cred­it, she has re­peat­ed­ly de­clared our non-in­volve­ment in the US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions, even up to the morn­ing of “Op­er­a­tion Ab­solute Re­solve,” and her hopes for “re­newed co­op­er­a­tion and the strength­en­ing of our long­stand­ing friend­ship with the peo­ple of Venezuela in the com­ing years.” We did ac­com­mo­date much more than the usu­al US mil­i­tary vis­it though. So, plain talk, bad man­ners: “What’s in it for us?”

Our coun­try has 170 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, ex­per­tise and in­fra­struc­ture in the en­er­gy in­dus­try. Our Pointe-à-Pierre oil re­fin­ery is a most con­ve­nient fa­cil­i­ty for the oil ma­jors to utilise with­out any threat of Chav­is­mo. In this col­umn, I have of­ten spo­ken about the mer­its of the Drag­on Gas project but our new “En­er­gy Ac­cel­er­a­tor Hub” would seek to “ac­cel­er­ate” the ex­ploita­tion of Lo­ran-Man­a­tee, Man­akin-Cocuina and Kapok-Do­ra­do fields as well.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has giv­en us the as­sur­ance that the en­er­gy agree­ments with Venezuela are still in­tact. Our OFAC li­cence for the Drag­on Gas project is valid un­til April. Sure­ly, we can ex­ploit the cur­rent cir­cum­stances to ad­vance our po­si­tion?! I al­so hope that Min­is­ter Jear­lean John’s re­cent vis­it to Chi­na brings that much-need­ed FDI!

At home, dri­vers lined up out­side the var­i­ous li­cens­ing of­fices across the coun­try to avoid the steep in­creas­es in fines for Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act of­fences. Due to the vol­ume of the cries from the “law­less”, PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­posed three to sev­en-day warn­ings to al­low re­pairs for cer­tain ve­hic­u­lar de­fects. For most cit­i­zens, this was an in­tro­duc­tion to Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our. It would have been a bap­tism of fire, as they were not in­ter­est­ed in his ser­mon on “law­less­ness” and his ex­cus­es of not hav­ing “op­er­a­tional da­ta” on the cam­paign trail when cer­tain promis­es were made, but the Prime Min­is­ter swooped in to save the day.

In de­vel­oped coun­tries, a tiered ap­proach to traf­fic en­force­ment is utilised, where warn­ings are com­mon for mi­nor, fix­able ve­hi­cle is­sues, but ma­jor in­frac­tions usu­al­ly lead to im­me­di­ate penal­ties. The fa­cil­i­ta­tion of com­pli­ance is al­so im­por­tant. How much more can be done on­line and de­cen­tralised? Can dri­vers ac­cess of­fi­cial ap­point­ment doc­u­men­ta­tion on­line, which they can dis­play to of­fi­cers ahead of their ap­point­ments, to sup­port ef­fi­cien­cy at the li­cens­ing of­fices? Cit­i­zens will al­so ex­pect the Gov­ern­ment to re­port on how the in­creased fines re­duced in­frac­tions, as well as how the mil­lions col­lect­ed were ac­tu­al­ly used to fix our ter­ri­ble roads.

To­day is the THA elec­tions and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine will be hope­ful that the TPP will be able to de­fend their 13 seats. Will they be able to con­vince To­ba­go peo­ple that they will fi­nal­ly de­liv­er full con­sti­tu­tion­al au­ton­o­my? Or will the PNM par­ty find a sec­ond wind in To­ba­go af­ter last year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion loss?