Raphael John-Lall

Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro has called Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar a “war­mon­ger”, ac­cus­ing her of pro­vok­ing protests and march­es across Venezuela in re­cent days. He claims this un­rest stems from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port for US mil­i­tary ac­tions in the Caribbean.

“Venezuela is over­flow­ing … with the pa­tri­ot­ic march­es that be­gan through­out the east­ern part of the coun­try be­cause they or­gan­ised them­selves in Mon­a­gas, Delta Amacuro, An­zoátegui, Su­cre and Nue­va Es­par­ta. They or­gan­ised them­selves on Mon­day, Tues­day, Wednes­day and Thurs­day against the threat of mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es called by the ir­re­spon­si­ble and war­mon­ger­ing prime min­is­ter, who is de­ter­mined to de­stroy the his­tor­i­cal bonds of broth­er­hood, co­op­er­a­tion and peace be­tween T&T and Venezuela,” he said.

He made these com­ments on Mon­day night on his week­ly pro­gramme “Con Maduro”.

He added that T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter has done “great dam­age” to the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

“Be­cause she re­sponds more to the in­ter­ests of the Amer­i­can far-right than to the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, that is the truth.”

The Gov­er­nor of the Venezue­lan state of Mi­ran­da, Elio Ser­ra­no, joined Pres­i­dent Maduro and his oth­er col­leagues from Venezuela’s rul­ing So­cial­ist Par­ty and con­demned T&T’s sup­port for the US, call­ing Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­min­is­tra­tion “lowlife”.

“As you know, the peo­ple of T&T have al­ways been friend­ly to the Venezue­lan peo­ple, and there has been co­op­er­a­tion be­tween our peo­ples. I am sure that the ex­pres­sion of a Gov­ern­ment like the one cur­rent­ly in T&T is not the ex­pres­sion of the peo­ple of T&T. I be­lieve that we al­ways have this will­ing­ness to con­tribute and col­lab­o­rate, and to par­tic­i­pate in the so­lu­tions for each ter­ri­to­ry. And that’s why it is so de­testable, this lowlife be­hav­iour. This be­hav­iour dragged down the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.”

Yes­ter­day, Ser­ra­no gave this view as a guest dur­ing the Laigua­na.tv pro­gramme “Aquí y Aho­ra”, host­ed by jour­nal­ist Julio Ri­obó.

The Venezue­lan jour­nal­ist al­so asked Ser­ra­no for his opin­ion on the de­ci­sion by T&T’s Gov­ern­ment to de­port 200 il­le­gal Venezue­lans and the de­ci­sion to re­duce the num­ber of work per­mits for Venezue­lans who are work­ing in T&T legal­ly.

“I am re­fer­ring to the pres­sure the Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment is putting on it. It’s a sub­mis­sive at­ti­tude to­wards the de­mands of US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, who is def­i­nite­ly the one be­hind this strat­e­gy,” Ser­a­no said.