Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader An­cil Den­nis has con­demned crit­ics of the now-col­lapsed Drag­on gas deal, call­ing them “id­iots” and warn­ing that the con­se­quences will af­fect every cit­i­zen—not just the gov­ern­ment.

Den­nis was re­spond­ing to the US gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­voke the li­cence that al­lowed Trinidad and To­ba­go to pur­sue the long-await­ed nat­ur­al gas project with Venezuela. The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion had is­sued the li­cence in 2023, but it was with­drawn on Tues­day amid re­newed US pres­sure on Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Cas­tara on Tues­day night, Den­nis de­fend­ed the gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the deal and re­ject­ed claims that the process lacked trans­paren­cy.

“The gov­ern­ment did not go be­hind any­body’s back. The gov­ern­ment did not hide any trans­ac­tion from any­body,” he said. “The gov­ern­ment took a much-need­ed se­ri­ous de­ci­sion, in part­ner­ship with the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, get­ting all the nec­es­sary ap­provals to pro­tect this coun­try from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any sanc­tions.”

He dis­missed crit­ics who ap­peared to wel­come the deal’s col­lapse and urged cit­i­zens to un­der­stand the broad­er im­pli­ca­tions.

“You have the id­iots, and I make no apol­o­gy, cel­e­brat­ing that as if it’s on­ly the gov­ern­ment will feel the ef­fects of that, as if it’s on­ly PNM peo­ple will feel the ef­fects of that,” Den­nis said. “Any­thing that jeop­ar­dis­es the eco­nom­ic progress of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, every sin­gle cit­i­zen will feel the ef­fects of it.”

Den­nis warned vot­ers not to be swayed by op­po­si­tion “sweet talk,” liken­ing their promis­es to what he de­scribed as failed cam­paign pledges in the Unit­ed States.

“Peo­ple in that place called the Unit­ed States are hav­ing re­grets to­day. They are still wait­ing on the food price to go down. They are still wait­ing for the gro­cery bill to be halved im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the elec­tion, and I’m say­ing be­ware of those promis­es.”

He ar­gued that the Drag­on gas deal was key to se­cur­ing the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly as nat­ur­al gas—not oil—re­mains cen­tral to its en­er­gy strat­e­gy.

“This is not a jokey thing,” Den­nis said. “This time re­quires ready and re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship… to en­sure that we find al­ter­na­tive eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.”