Have you ever no­ticed how in gang­ster films, when the mafia don is ne­go­ti­at­ing with his ri­vals or giv­ing in­struc­tions to his un­der­lings, he hard­ly ever speaks in ex­plic­it terms? He will in­stead ex­press his in­ten­tions vague­ly and his threats cryp­ti­cal­ly. Some­thing along the lines of, “It would be a shame if your busi­ness burnt down,” or, “See to it that tonight he sleeps with the fish­es.” Diplo­ma­cy op­er­ates in much the same way. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from coun­tries will meet and make their de­mands and/or threats us­ing lan­guage that lacks hos­til­i­ty but still main­tains a se­ri­ous tone.

In my pre­vi­ous col­umn, I wrote that the US Em­bassy ar­tic­u­lat­ed their dis­plea­sure re­gard­ing the March 27 meet­ing by send­ing a list of sanc­tioned Venezue­lan na­tion­als to our Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs. One might have thought that this sub­tle “warn­ing” would have been enough. That our lead­ers would have breathed a sigh of re­lief that our pow­er­ful neigh­bour to the north was giv­ing them a “bligh” af­ter get­ting caught in a shady deal with our shady neigh­bour liv­ing next door. Fur­ther­more, and per­haps most im­por­tant­ly, that this warn­ing would have prompt­ed our gov­ern­ment to re­think its re­la­tion­ship with the Maduro regime. Well, it would seem that this mat­ter is far from closed.

Last Tues­day (May 19), US Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo is­sued a state­ment in which he re­fut­ed the claim made by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young that the is­sue of T&T vi­o­lat­ing the Rio Treaty nev­er came up dur­ing their re­cent con­ver­sa­tion. That rev­e­la­tion, how­ev­er, did noth­ing to put the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on the backpedal; in fact, he pro­ceed­ed to dou­ble-down that what he said was in­deed true. Re­spond­ing to the Am­bas­sador’s state­ment, Min­is­ter Young said his com­ments in the Up­per House were “mis­con­strued”. Ac­cord­ing to him, “I nev­er said that the Am­bas­sador did not raise the vis­it of Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez nor did I say that the Am­bas­sador did not raise the Rio Treaty. What I said was the breach of treaty was not raised.” He re­peat­ed and for­ti­fied this ex­pla­na­tion when speak­ing in par­lia­ment lat­er that day, that, “…no breach of the treaty was raised; mean­ing that it was not pos­i­tive­ly put to me that Trinidad and To­ba­go has breached the treaty.”

Hon­est­ly… I’m flab­ber­gast­ed! His re­sponse is the epit­o­me of the lo­cal adage of “play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness”. I hes­i­tate to call Min­is­ter Young a liar, but it’s ei­ther that or he is in­cred­i­bly nalve as to how diplo­ma­cy works. As­sum­ing he isn’t, his fee­ble at­tempt at word­play marks a new low in his char­ac­ter and cred­i­bil­i­ty. Worse yet, he is not on­ly tak­ing all of us for fools but the US Am­bas­sador as well. It’s in­ter­est­ing how Mr Mon­del­lo pref­aced his state­ment with, “Nor­mal­ly I do not com­ment on pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with host gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.” And why should he? He prob­a­bly couldn’t care less about the an­tics of our lo­cal politi­cians. But I’m won­der­ing if he was prompt­ed to re­spond af­ter hear­ing Min­is­ter Young re­fer to some­one on his staff as an “un­der­ling”. Af­ter all, I’m sure an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen who serves with the diplo­mat­ic corps mat­ters more to the Am­bas­sador than a min­is­ter from a third world coun­try who is noth­ing more than a big fish in a small pond.

Then again, to pre­sume that I pos­sess some in­sight in­to the US Am­bas­sador’s mo­tives would be ar­ro­gant, to say the least. But ar­ro­gance is at the heart of why Min­is­ter Young now finds him­self in hot wa­ter. His sole tac­tic in de­fend­ing the gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions is to ig­nore the facts and la­bel crit­ics as agents of the Op­po­si­tion. In the space of two weeks, the fo­cus of the out­rage has shift­ed from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his de­ci­sion to meet with the Venezue­lan VP, over to Min­is­ter Young for his mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the truth to the pub­lic. His role as one of the ar­chi­tects of this scan­dal is fur­ther so­lid­i­fied by his rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing the PM’s “Gary Sobers”, a ti­tle he has will­ing­ly em­braced. That be­ing said, de­spite the calls for his res­ig­na­tion or re­moval, Stu­art Young’s po­si­tion in the cab­i­net seems se­cure. He con­tin­ues to en­joy the con­fi­dence of the PM and the Sen­ate pres­i­dent re­ject­ed the Op­po­si­tion’s mo­tion to re­fer him to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee. And, of course, PN­Mites will sup­port him as long as he wears a Balis­er tie. Nev­er­the­less, whether he knows it or not, a sword of Damo­cles still hangs over him.

The re­al­i­ty is, on top of the Venezue­lan-meet­ing-fi­as­co, his pos­tur­ing in the par­lia­ment has now in­volved and stoked the ire of the US Am­bas­sador. He and the of­fice have been twice in­sult­ed by Min­is­ter Young: by be­ing used in pet­ty po­lit­i­cal wran­gling and for bring­ing his diplo­mat­ic skills in­to ques­tion. Much like the de­liv­ery of the em­bassy’s sanc­tion list, the Am­bas­sador’s state­ment serves as a warn­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Min­is­ter Young is ei­ther too much of a po­lit­i­cal neo­phyte or too ar­ro­gant to recog­nise it. It’s left to be seen what steps the US au­thor­i­ties will take to make even clear­er their dis­plea­sure over our coun­try’s re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela. But if this were a gang­ster film, Stu­art Young would wake up one morn­ing and find a copy of the Rio Treaty tucked in­to his bed be­side him.