Just sev­en miles away, Venezuela is Trinidad and To­ba­go’s near­est neigh­bour, its out­line seen from Colum­bus Bay on any clear day. Our gov­ern­ment must there­fore be com­pli­ment­ed on ini­ti­at­ing a “new era” in bi-lat­er­al re­la­tions from a work­ing vis­it to Cara­cas by For­eign Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and his con­tin­gent.

Restora­tion has start­ed.

And led by the Unit­ed States, prepa­ra­tions for the tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy are un­der­way. In­deed, af­ter Nico­las Maduro was ex­tract­ed from of­fice by US forces on Jan­u­ary 3rd, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed sup­port for a peace­ful de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tran­si­tion, say­ing whether “they choose Del­cy Ro­driguez or Maria Macha­do, or any­one else through fair elec­tions, my gov­ern­ment will work with them.” Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ments al­so wished for “Venezuela’s sta­bil­i­ty, good gov­er­nance, democ­ra­cy and pros­per­i­ty”. All ab­solute­ly right.

As Venezue­lan econ­o­mist, Ri­car­do Hauss­man, puts it: “Pros­per­i­ty does not come from oil, de­crees or even benev­o­lent rulers, but from de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights. Rights cre­ate pri­vate prop­er­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. They al­low peo­ple to in­vest, in­no­vate and dream. Re­store rights, and so­ci­ety can re­cov­er.”

Venezuela need­ed a re­turn to democ­ra­cy more than ever. But the ground had to be pre­pared. All in­sti­tu­tions of pow­er and all elec­toral of­fices be­low the pres­i­dent were held by sup­port­ers of the Maduro regime, said Harold Trinku­nas, Se­nior Re­search Schol­ar at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Venezuela need­ed elec­tions un­der a sys­tem where the courts, elec­toral au­thor­i­ties, se­cu­ri­ty forces, and me­dia were in­de­pen­dent, free from con­trol by any one po­lit­i­cal fac­tion.

So, what has hap­pened since Maduro’s re­moval?

Venezuela’s prospects for democ­ra­cy seem to be im­prov­ing, says an analy­sis in the Econ­o­mist mag­a­zine. While Pres­i­dent Trump him­self “boast­ed end­less­ly about how he now con­trolled Venezuela’s oil”, he gave a fair­ly free hand to his Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, who “re­al­ly does care about end­ing left-wing dic­ta­tor­ships in Latin Amer­i­ca”.

Last month, there was a first round of ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Venezuela’s regime and Op­po­si­tion fig­ures, in­clud­ing Di­no­rah Figuera, for­mer pres­i­dent of the 2015 Na­tion­al As­sem­bly. Six days of talks end­ed with an ini­tial agree­ment on a process of ju­di­cial re­forms in­clud­ing a new ap­point­ment mech­a­nism for jus­tices of the Supreme Court.

Ms Figuera’s par­ty, called it “a ma­jor step to­wards democ­ra­cy”. There is op­ti­mism that, by De­cem­ber, fur­ther talks could pro­duce re­forms to­wards fair elec­tions.

If, in­deed, Venezuela holds a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in 2027, it would be cause for great cel­e­bra­tion. Free and fair elec­tions would re­vi­talise the na­tion and give hope to its peo­ple in­clud­ing the eight mil­lion who fled their home­land dur­ing the Maduro regime.

But will the polls re­al­ly be held?

Con­cerns have now arisen over what Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has termed the “biggest oil deal in world his­to­ry” which some ex­perts warn runs con­trary to the Venezue­lan con­sti­tu­tion. An­a­lysts agree that any fu­ture, freely elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Venezuela might ques­tion a trans­ac­tion which gives Amer­i­ca so much con­trol of the coun­try’s oil. And crit­i­cal­ly, ex­perts warn there could be an in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of feel­ings among Venezue­lans that the US gov­ern­ment is ex­ploit­ing their na­tion’s nat­ur­al re­sources, pro­vok­ing a po­lit­i­cal back­lash that desta­bilis­es in­ter­im pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, a crit­i­cal part­ner of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. Is in­sta­bil­i­ty ahead?

Al­so, the Fi­nan­cial Times warns the agree­ment may not suc­ceed in at­tract­ing in­vest­ment from US groups. In­deed, oil ma­jors like Exxon Mo­bil and Cono­coPhillips, re­main wary and al­so have ques­tions over Trump’s cho­sen pri­vate part­ner, North Amer­i­can Blue En­er­gy Part­ners head­ed by Ale­jan­dro Be­tan­court who has faced in­ves­ti­ga­tions in Switzer­land for mon­ey laun­der­ing.

He is “re­viled by some in Venezuela” says the Econ­o­mist, “for the moral flex­i­bil­i­ty that let him get rich work­ing with the regime”. There is al­so spec­u­la­tion that cash and tax rev­enue from the deal could cre­ate in­cen­tives for pow­er­ful peo­ple to block Venezuela’s tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy. The Econ­o­mist thinks “Mr Be­tan­court, who is well-con­nect­ed in both Cara­cas and Mar-a-La­go, has every rea­son to whis­per to Mr Trump that a rush to free elec­tions could spoil his oil bo­nan­za”. Would Trump be per­suad­ed?

And how would a new US Pres­i­dent in 2029 view the deal? Se­nior De­mo­c­rat politi­cians have al­ready slammed it as “cor­rup­tion on an epic scale”, sug­gest­ing that if the par­ty wins midterm elec­tions in No­vem­ber, they will close­ly scru­ti­nise the agree­ment.

“And would a fu­ture Venezue­lan regime opt to rip it up, as it has done twice be­fore?” Many warn­ing lights are flash­ing red, says the Econ­o­mist and un­der­scores that on­ly ne­go­ti­a­tions con­duct­ed by a de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment would find ac­cept­abil­i­ty among the peo­ple of Venezuela.

Amer­i­can of­fi­cials in­sist that Venezuela’s tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy will con­tin­ue. And leader of the US ef­fort, Mar­co Ru­bio, clear­ly un­der­stands that a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic Venezuela is both de­sir­able and in Amer­i­ca’s in­ter­est.

But, speak­ing on the re­cent deal, Ri­car­do Haus­mann, as re­port­ed by the BBC, has said to Ru­bio on so­cial me­dia, “You opt­ed to push through an as­set seizure, an un­con­sti­tu­tion­al agree­ment with an il­le­git­i­mate and op­pres­sive gov­ern­ment, in­stead of us­ing the lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed States to first re­store con­sti­tu­tion­al or­der and democ­ra­cy.” Well!

Venezuela is clear­ly not a done deal. But how­ev­er things turn out “across the Orinoco”, T&T is on the right track in start­ing a new chap­ter with our near­est neigh­bour.