Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Gov­ern­ment was forced to “eat hum­ble pie” fol­low­ing its de­ci­sion to for­mal­ly recog­nise Del­cy Ro­dríguez as in­ter­im Pres­i­dent of Venezuela.

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les ar­gued that the shift in po­si­tion was in­evitable, point­ing to chang­ing in­ter­na­tion­al dy­nam­ics and re­newed en­er­gy in­ter­ests in Venezuela.

Her com­ments came a day af­ter Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers con­firmed dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go now recog­nis­es Ro­dríguez in the in­ter­im role, a clear de­par­ture from months of Gov­ern­ment de­flec­tion on the is­sue.

Beck­les said the ad­min­is­tra­tion had lit­tle room to ma­noeu­vre.

“They re­al­ly don’t have a choice. They have to eat hum­ble pie. It’s as sim­ple as that,” she said, adding that glob­al de­vel­op­ments, in­clud­ing im­proved re­la­tions be­tween Venezuela and the Unit­ed States, have shift­ed the geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape.

She not­ed that sanc­tions af­fect­ing Ro­dríguez have been eased and that ma­jor oil com­pa­nies are once again en­gag­ing Venezuela, sug­gest­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go had to ad­just its stance to avoid be­ing left be­hind.

The Op­po­si­tion leader al­so ref­er­enced the Gov­ern­ment’s pre­vi­ous po­si­tion on the Drag­on Gas Deal, say­ing ear­li­er claims that the project was “dead” now ap­pear in­con­sis­tent with the lat­est diplo­mat­ic push.

“If it is the same gov­ern­ment, over the last cou­ple years have been say­ing the drag­on gas deal is dead; in essence, they have no choice, we see Del­cy has gone to Grena­da, past Trinidad, and I am not sur­prised.”

Her re­marks fol­low state­ments ear­li­er this week from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who an­nounced that a del­e­ga­tion will trav­el to Venezuela to se­cure this coun­try’s “just share” of cross-bor­der oil and gas re­sources, sig­nalling re­newed ef­forts to ad­vance stalled en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Beck­les fur­ther crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as an in­con­sis­ten­cy in the Gov­ern­ment’s for­eign pol­i­cy, re­call­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go had pre­vi­ous­ly recog­nised op­po­si­tion fig­ure Juan Guaidó dur­ing Venezuela’s po­lit­i­cal cri­sis, but is now em­brac­ing a dif­fer­ent po­si­tion un­der Ro­dríguez.

Mean­while, Beck­les ex­pressed doubt that Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar would at­tend a pro­posed emer­gency meet­ing of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett.

“I don’t feel the Prime Min­is­ter will at­tend,” Beck­les said, ac­cus­ing the Prime Min­is­ter of plac­ing her­self in a “very dif­fi­cult po­si­tion” fol­low­ing strong crit­i­cisms of Cari­com and its lead­er­ship in re­cent weeks.

She point­ed out that Cari­com Chair­man Ter­rance Drew and Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Bar­nett had re­cent­ly trav­elled to Trinidad and To­ba­go for dis­cus­sions, a move she said demon­strat­ed the re­gion’s will­ing­ness to en­gage.

Beck­les ar­gued that fail­ing to at­tend such a meet­ing would fur­ther strain re­la­tions with­in the re­gion­al bloc, which she de­scribed as crit­i­cal to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic in­ter­ests, in­clud­ing trade, ed­u­ca­tion, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

She al­so dis­missed claims by Min­is­ter Sobers that the Op­po­si­tion and Cari­com were act­ing in con­cert on the mat­ter, chal­leng­ing him to pro­vide ev­i­dence.

As ten­sions con­tin­ue over both Venezuela pol­i­cy and Cari­com re­la­tions, Beck­les warned that the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach risks iso­lat­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go on key re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues.