How did the Vice Pres­i­dent of Venezuela, Del­cy Ro­driguez en­ter T&T to meet with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley?

That was one of the main ques­tions cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia af­ter the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter con­firmed that Row­ley met with Ro­driguez on Fri­day.

So­cial me­dia ac­tivist Suzette Louwe ques­tioned why the two had to meet face to face.

"We have world lead­ers who are dis­cussing the same is­sues with oth­er world lead­ers via video con­fer­enc­ing and tele­phone calls be­cause they un­der­stand how high­ly con­ta­gious this virus is," she said.

"What was so ur­gent for this woman to be here that she had to fu­el a jet and fly to Trinidad and fly back to Venezuela?" she ques­tioned.

Louwe al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing of the meet­ing, con­sid­er­ing it came just af­ter the Unit­ed States ac­cused Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro of drug traf­fick­ing.

"What was so im­por­tant that (Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) Stu­art Young had to breach our lock­down pro­to­cols to al­low en­try of this woman?" she asked.

Louwe said that Ro­driguez was al­lowed in­to the coun­try even though cit­i­zens re­mained strand­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the brief me­dia re­lease, Row­ley and Ro­driguez met at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.

"The meet­ing fo­cused on the strat­e­gy be­ing de­ployed in both coun­tries to com­bat COVID-19. The Vice Pres­i­dent is di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for the COVID-19 re­sponse in Venezuela," the re­lease said.

Ro­driguez and a small en­tourage were es­cort­ed by po­lice af­ter the meet­ing and trans­port­ed in gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cles.

There is a marked lack of in­for­ma­tion com­ing out of Venezuela about their COVID-19 cas­es, but ac­cord­ing to a World Map de­tails, there have been 113 con­firmed cas­es and two deaths.

This im­promp­tu, un­planned meet­ing be­tween the two came just days af­ter the Unit­ed States put a US $15 mil­lion price tag for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest of Ro­driguez's boss, Pres­i­dent Maduro.

Back in 2018, Ro­driguez was one of 11 Venezue­lan of­fi­cials who faced sanc­tions im­posed by the Eu­ro­pean Union. She was banned from trav­el­ling to the EU and had her as­sets frozen.

Ac­cord­ing to the EU, Ro­driguez and the oth­er of­fi­cials were "re­spon­si­ble for hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions and for un­der­min­ing democ­ra­cy and the rule of law in Venezuela."

The meet­ing al­so comes just days af­ter the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) re­ject­ed Venezuela's plea for some $5 bil­lion aid to help fight COVID-19. The IMF said that there was a lack of clar­i­ty on who was the re­al leader of the coun­try and as such the re­quest could not be con­sid­ered.

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned whether the re­port of the vis­it was ac­cu­rate since there were no de­tails in the pub­lic do­main.

"If she was here, then Row­ley is a hyp­ocrite be­cause it is ob­vi­ous that they had to open the bor­ders," she said.

She said while Row­ley was will­ing to open the bor­ders to meet with Ro­driguez, he dis­missed her sug­ges­tion that the coun­try should send the na­tion­al air­line for its cit­i­zens.

"When I made the call for that to hap­pen, the bor­ders weren't closed yet," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she hoped that Row­ley at least asked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting the strand­ed na­tion­als home and did not just meet to find a way to "help out his part­ner (Maduro)".

The Gov­ernem­nt an­nounced a par­tial shut down of the bor­ders on March 15. The bor­ders were ini­tial­ly shut for all non-na­tion­als.

Bor­der re­stric­tions

On March 21, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young an­nounced fur­ther re­stric­tions, this time com­plete­ly clos­ing off the bor­ders to all pas­sen­gers by March 22.

It was soon in the pub­lic do­main that more than 30 T&T cit­i­zens re­mained strand­ed in Suri­name, an­oth­er 70 were stuck in Mar­gari­ta and an­oth­er 35 were left in Bar­ba­dos.

Even af­ter the Suri­name group is­sued a le­gal let­ter de­mand­ing en­try, Young was adamant that the bor­ders would re­main closed and that ex­emp­tions would be grant­ed for on­ly "cru­cial" cir­cum­stances.

He said too that the Gov­ern­ment was be­ing "very strict" about al­low­ing en­try even un­der those cru­cial cir­cum­stances.

BOX

No re­sponse from PM Row­ley, Young, Cox

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Row­ley, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Don­na Cox about the meet­ing. Guardian Me­dia asked all three the fol­low­ing: With re­gards to the im­promp­tu vis­it by the VP of Venezuela, can you say what was the pur­pose of the vis­it? Did the bor­ders have to be opened to fa­cil­i­tate that vis­it? Is this some­thing that could have been dis­cussed on the phone con­sid­er­ing the health im­pli­ca­tions to both in­di­vid­u­als?"

There was no re­sponse.