Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has warned Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro that if he in­ter­feres with the Guyanese peo­ple, he’s in­ter­fer­ing with Trinidad and To­ba­go too.

She did so at last night’s UNC Re­port in Pe­nal, where she de­clared: “My clear mes­sage to Maduro is you touch one, you touch all! We un­equiv­o­cal­ly sup­port the peo­ple of Guyana in this cri­sis. Stay out of Es­se­qui­bo!”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “The in­ten­tion of the cur­rent cri­sis be­tween Guyana and Venezuela cre­at­ed by Maduro is to whip up na­tion­al­ism un­der the false pre­text that the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is mis­treat­ing Venezuela. He wants to make him­self a vic­tim de­fend­ing the moth­er­land and will paint him­self as a great hero of Venezuela as (Si­mon) Bo­li­var and (Hugo) Chavez.

“His in­ten­tion seems to be to de­ploy the army due to the threat of war, then con­trol streets and move­ments of per­sons to pre­vent cam­paign­ing and protests.”

She re­called that as Prime Min­is­ter in 2015, she stood with Guyana’s then-pres­i­dent David Granger, when Venezuela claimed mar­itime wa­ters en­com­pass­ing Guyana’s ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone

She said that oc­curred be­cause of the Venezue­lan elec­tions that De­cem­ber.

“I stood up for the peo­ple of Guyana in 2015, and the UNC will stand with the peo­ple of Guyana now ... but Kei­th Row­ley sheep­ish­ly hides be­hind the zone of peace! Row­ley’s talk about the re­gion re­main­ing a zone of peace isn’t enough. Guyana must know they have our full sup­port with mean­ing­ful and prac­ti­cal back­ing!”

She added: “If Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port means we have to wait longer for Drag­on Gas, so be it. I tell the Guyanese peo­ple stand your ground, you’ve suf­fered too long, but now you have a great fu­ture. Don’t let any­one take it from you..”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment’s civ­il claim against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and for­mer sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

“This Gov­ern­ment is des­per­ate for a po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tion. I chal­lenge AG Ar­mour. Ar­gue this case your­self on the con­di­tion that if you lose, you’ll per­son­al­ly pay the le­gal costs award­ed to Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen’s lawyer,” she said.

She added that she al­so awaits Row­ley’s de­ci­sion on the pro­posed an­ti-crime talks.

“I bet when he re­turns from his lav­ish tax­pay­er-fund­ed trip, he’ll speak for an­oth­er two hours and bouff every­one,” she said.