Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Mad­man!

That’s how Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day de­scribed Venezue­lan Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo’s re­port­ed de­scrip­tion of T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a “drunk”.

Alexan­der gave that re­sponse at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, when asked about Ca­bel­lo’s state­ment on Wednes­day.

This, fol­low­ing height­en­ing ten­sions in the re­gion due to the US mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment of war­ships and a nu­clear-pow­ered sub­ma­rine in the South­ern Caribbean. It is part of the US’ crack­down on drug car­tels in the re­gion.

Venezuela is on high alert, de­clar­ing it to be a bid aimed at over­throw­ing that coun­try’s Nico­las Maduro regime.

T&T and four oth­er coun­tries are part of the US coali­tion against the car­tels. On Tues­day, the US claimed a mis­sile strike had de­stroyed a boat al­leged­ly car­ry­ing il­le­gal drugs con­nect­ed to the Venezue­lan Tren de Aragua transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion. Eleven peo­ple were killed. A video of the “hit” was cir­cu­lat­ed.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s cel­e­bra­tion and praise of the US strike—in which she sup­port­ed the US killing all drug traf­fick­ers “vi­o­lent­ly”—has been wide­ly re­port­ed in var­i­ous coun­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly the US.

On Wednes­day, Venezue­lan Min­is­ter of Pop­u­lar Pow­er for In­te­ri­or, Jus­tice and Peace Ca­bel­lo, speak­ing on a Venezue­lan tele­vi­sion pro­gramme about the US mil­i­tary pres­ence and the mis­sile strike, re­ferred to “the drunk woman who gov­erns Trinidad” and “the stu­pid crook who gov­erns the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.”

Ca­bel­lo added that they were con­demn­ing their peo­ple, such as their fish­er­men, to be “ex­e­cut­ed” at sea. He said in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia re­ports were ques­tion­ing the US’ ac­tion and in­for­ma­tion giv­en on the in­ci­dent.

Yes­ter­day, Alexan­der, when asked about Ca­bel­lo’s re­marks about Per­sad-Bisses­sar, said, “I’ll call him a mad­man...”

Alexan­der said Ca­bel­lo’s re­mark was of­fen­sive.

“Of course it is, you’re call­ing per­sons names—we don’t do that here. But if he could iden­ti­fy her as that, prob­a­bly he’s ei­ther that too, or he’s a mad­man.

“It would be fair to say, if I say to him be­cause of what is hap­pen­ing now and the Unit­ed States, he’s fa­cil­i­tat­ing drugs in his coun­try—is he a drug push­er? Is he a pimp?”

Alexan­der re­peat­ed a sim­i­lar opin­ion when asked about Venezue­lan Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Fred­dy Nanez’s dis­missal of the video of the mis­sile-struck boat as an “AI cre­ation.” Alexan­der felt the re­mark had come from some­one who was “crazy or mad”.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said the Gov­ern­ment re­mains con­fi­dent that the US mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment was about drug in­ter­dic­tion.

“We have no ba­sis for say­ing oth­er than that,” he said, but de­clined to ven­ture in­to the realm of con­jec­ture.

On whether the Gov­ern­ment was look­ing at ac­ti­vat­ing the SO­FA Treaty with the US that al­lows for its mil­i­tary pres­ence in T&T, Sturge said, “Not, not at this point.”

Sturge al­so said there’s no ba­sis for the de­ploy­ment of T&T’s De­fence Force at this stage.

“Noth­ing has hap­pened to war­rant that. What took place in terms of the airstrike oc­curred in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters and in pur­suance of one sov­er­eign state pur­su­ing their own in­ter­ests against per­sons who are act­ing in a man­ner that is in­im­i­cal to their in­ter­est. That has noth­ing to do with T&T.”

Alexan­der said lo­cal au­thor­i­ties had in­for­ma­tion long ago that the Tren De Aragua gang was in T&T and po­lice con­tin­ue to tar­get, in­ves­ti­gate and re­ceive in­tel­li­gence on these per­sons,”...even go­ing as far as the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment - we of­ten search to see what we could come up with, with re­spect to those per­sons.”

“The Amer­i­cans have their in­for­ma­tion and we al­low them to do their job,” he added.