Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has de­fend­ed her re­cent meet­ing with Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero, say­ing the en­gage­ment was con­duct­ed trans­par­ent­ly and with the full knowl­edge of the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs.

The meet­ing, which took place short­ly af­ter Venezuela sus­pend­ed gas deals with T&T, drew sharp crit­i­cism from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). The par­ty’s PRO, Kirk Meighoo, de­scribed it as “un­pa­tri­ot­ic and sedi­tious.”

The talks oc­curred just hours af­ter Venezuela de­clared Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar per­sona non gra­ta amid es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween Cara­cas and both the Unit­ed States and T&T.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Beck­les pro­duced a let­ter signed by the Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs con­firm­ing that the Venezue­lan Em­bassy had for­mal­ly re­quest­ed as­sis­tance in ar­rang­ing a cour­tesy call.

“It is not un­usu­al for Lead­ers of the Op­po­si­tion to meet with Am­bas­sadors. All those arrange­ments are done through the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, so it is not that you get a call and do this at your con­ve­nience, or that the Min­istry wouldn’t know,” Beck­les ex­plained.

A se­nior of­fi­cial at the min­istry con­firmed that the Venezue­lan re­quest was made and ap­proved at least two weeks pri­or to the meet­ing.

Beck­les added that for­mer Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne ac­com­pa­nied her to the dis­cus­sion.

“I can see that based on what is go­ing on now, peo­ple would ask why I did it,” she said. “But I am very knowl­edge­able about the process, I am very con­scious of the pro­to­col, and I hope the let­ter will help to re­solve those con­cerns.”

She said the con­ver­sa­tion fo­cused main­ly on re­gion­al peace and the evolv­ing geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion.

“It wasn’t a long meet­ing—maybe 15 or 20 min­utes. Of course, the is­sue of what is go­ing on be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela was raised, but not in any de­tail. You can’t pre­tend that isn’t a re­al is­sue, and we talked about the re­la­tion­ship our coun­tries have had over the years,” Beck­les said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader dis­missed the crit­i­cism, cit­ing her diplo­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence and fa­mil­iar­i­ty with in­ter­na­tion­al pro­ce­dure.

Dur­ing a diplo­mat­ic event on Wednes­day evening, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers was al­so seen shar­ing a cor­dial in­ter­ac­tion with the Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador.

Beck­les, how­ev­er, crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar for what she de­scribed as a fail­ure to prop­er­ly en­gage the pub­lic on the grow­ing re­gion­al ten­sions.

“One of my chal­lenges has been the fail­ure of the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter to come be­fore the me­dia and clear­ly ex­plain the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion. It is fine to be is­su­ing press re­leas­es, but at the end of the day, the Prime Min­is­ter is the leader of the coun­try and should make her­self avail­able,” she said.

While Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­spond­ed to some me­dia ques­tions via What­sApp, she has not at­tend­ed a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing since June.

Beck­les al­so warned that the cur­rent diplo­mat­ic strain could have eco­nom­ic reper­cus­sions for T&T and the wider Cari­com re­gion.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly there will be con­cerns if the Prime Min­is­ter has start­ed talk­ing about look­ing else­where for trade. The ques­tion is why—do we have a sur­plus, or have we de­cid­ed, based on what is hap­pen­ing in the re­gion, to shift di­rec­tion? How will that im­pact us?” she asked.