Di­rec­tor of Re­gion­al and African Af­fairs at the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, Kafra Kam­bon says he sup­ports the sale of fu­el to US-sanc­tioned Venezuela.

"If in fact, any­one in the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go used a cir­cuitous route to sell oil to Venezuela, I am in sup­port of that ac­tion. I on­ly hope that they cov­ered their tracks well enough to avoid the sniff­ing hounds of the treach­er­ous (Dr Roodal) Mooni­lal and oth­er po­lit­i­cal op­por­tunists and the spy­ing ca­pac­i­ty of the US Gov­ern­ment," Kam­bon said in a long post on so­cial me­dia on Sat­ur­day.

Iron­i­cal­ly, while ask­ing peo­ple to cov­er their tracks if act­ing against sanc­tions, Kam­bon said the "is­sues here are moral, le­gal and, from the point of self-in­ter­est, tac­ti­cal.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go has a le­gal right, un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law, as well as a moral and prac­ti­cal oblig­a­tion to sup­port Venezuela. If the Gov­ern­ment sold oil di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly to Venezuela they did not breach any na­tion­al law and, ac­cord­ing to the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions, they did not breach any in­ter­na­tion­al law."

Kam­bon's state­ment is sim­i­lar to ones Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley made on Fri­day dur­ing an ad­dress to the me­dia. At that time, Row­ley said that US sanc­tions are not the same as in­ter­na­tion­al law.

"What is the moral­i­ty in sup­port­ing or in any way giv­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty to the Unit­ed States po­si­tion? The Trump regime, moral­ly bank­rupt and a dan­ger to the world as well as the US it­self, for its own rea­sons, de­cid­ed to sanc­tion Venezuela," he said.

"They have a few lack­eys in the Caribbean in­clud­ing coun­tries that sur­vived hard times large­ly due to the gen­eros­i­ty of the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment with its Petro Caribe pro­gram. Now with the sys­tem­at­ic im­pov­er­ish­ment of their bene­fac­tor by sanc­tions, they are pre­pared to cre­ate strains in CARI­COM by pros­ti­tut­ing them­selves for a few US dol­lars."

T&T, un­der for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, ab­stained from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Petro Caribe agree­ment be­cause he was con­cerned about Venezue­lan over­reach in the coun­try.

"Apart from our moral and hu­man­i­tar­i­an oblig­a­tion to Venezuela, our own self-in­ter­est is in­volved. If the regime in Venezuela col­laps­es through US sanc­tions or US mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go will be faced with a cat­a­stro­phe even worse than pos­si­ble il­le­gal and im­moral US sanc­tions against our coun­try," he said.

Kam­bon warned that a Venezue­lan col­lapse would "det­o­nate a de­mo­graph­ic bomb that could land tens of thou­sands more des­per­ate refugees here than the coun­try could ab­sorb. Some will land with the guns they now have in hand for the de­fence of their home­land."