Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­eign re­la­tions ex­pert Dr In­dera Ram­per­sad be­lieves po­lit­i­cal peace in Venezuela will have sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive im­pacts for Trinidad and To­ba­go, but Venezue­lan mi­grants here are scep­ti­cal the talks be­tween Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro’s ad­min­is­tra­tion and the op­po­si­tion will be gen­uine.

On Tues­day, Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment and its op­po­si­tion signed two deals lay­ing out elec­toral guar­an­tees for the 2024 elec­tions and mea­sures they said would pro­tect the coun­try’s na­tion­al in­ter­ests.

The deals were signed dur­ing talks in Bar­ba­dos fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Nor­way. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both par­ties signed a doc­u­ment ti­tled, “Par­tial Agree­ment for the pro­tec­tion of the vi­tal in­ter­ests of the na­tion.”

The doc­u­ment stat­ed that there was recog­ni­tion of the need to build a vi­sion of a joint fu­ture for all Venezue­lans. Four agree­ments were signed in the mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing. This was wel­comed by the Unit­ed Na­tions, who com­mend­ed the ef­forts of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners in the ef­fort and en­cour­aged the im­ple­men­ta­tion in good faith.

Com­ment­ing on this yes­ter­day, Dr Ram­per­sad said even­tu­al­ly, both the gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion in Venezuela had to work to­wards an am­i­ca­ble co-ex­is­tence.

“I think des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures. It had to come to this, some­thing had to be done. This im­passe has been go­ing on for years,” Ram­per­sad said.

“When Chavez was in pow­er, he did a bet­ter job of man­ag­ing it but he’s a much clev­er­er politi­cian than Maduro in my opin­ion. When Maduro came, every­thing broke down, he took some de­ci­sions that right wing Venezue­lans did not agree with. But whether this is a talk shop, whether this is op­tics or PR, or whether it’s mean­ing­ful di­a­logue, is left to be seen. But whether or not they are able to strike an ac­cord is what I’m more in­ter­est­ed in giv­en the hos­til­i­ties in the past.”

How­ev­er, she said if po­lit­i­cal peace could be achieved that would be fan­tas­tic news for T&T and the wider world.

“I think all coun­tries around are look­ing for an ease up on the mi­gra­tion of Venezue­lan cit­i­zens in­to their coun­try. We look for­ward to sta­bil­i­ty. Many Trinida­di­ans used to vis­it Venezuela of­ten, there was the two-suit­case traders and many tourists went to Venezuela and Mar­gari­ta and all that had stopped, so I think it’s some­thing cit­i­zens here missed im­mense­ly,” Ram­per­sad said.

Asked whether these bi-par­ti­san talks will lead to the Unit­ed States look­ing more favourably at Venezuela, Ram­per­sad said, “While the US is sanc­tion­ing some of us, the US it­self is try­ing to have deals with Venezuela be­cause it’s a close and ready sup­ply of oil and nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela and they have many mul­ti-na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions there, so the US has been do­ing busi­ness with Venezuela but the US will ben­e­fit if there is a peace ac­cord be­cause the US does not like in­sta­bil­i­ty in the re­gion, more so in its back­yard and more so from a so­cial­ist gov­ern­ment.”

But Sofia Figueroa Leon, a so­cial ac­tivist for Venezue­lan mi­grants in T&T, said she was not hold­ing her breath that the talks would yield the pos­i­tive re­sults the peo­ple of Venezuela need.

“It’s be­ing viewed as an­oth­er ploy to make it seem as if Maduro is re­al­ly now want­i­ng to have hon­est fair elec­tions, it’s been 24 years of di­a­logue. As a born Venezue­lan, we re­al­ly wish that wasn’t true but it’s been 24 years of the same,” Leon lament­ed.

She added, “We wait and see but it’s al­ways been this way, how can a leop­ard change its colours all of a sud­den? But maybe it’s con­ve­nient to him be­cause of the truth that Biden has giv­en them oil for cash. We hope there is a change, and a lot of Venezue­lans liv­ing here are hop­ing for change.”

Leon said it seemed as if the USA was try­ing to give Venezuela a chance to achieve po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, but she be­lieves Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro was on­ly at­tempt­ing to give the per­cep­tion that things would change.

Ques­tions were sent to Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Al­varo En­rique Sanchez Cordero, who ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of our mes­sages but did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to our queries.