Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley took to his Face­book page in the ear­ly hours of Thurs­day morn­ing to re­spond to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, crit­i­cis­ing her re­cent com­ments on Venezuela and his de­ci­sion to re­tire.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sug­gest­ed Row­ley’s de­ci­sion to step down was not about re­tire­ment but about flee­ing from the con­se­quences of his ac­tions, link­ing it to Don­ald Trump’s elec­tion. She ac­cused him of sup­port­ing a "dic­ta­to­r­i­al and cor­rupt" Maduro regime with ties to drug traf­fick­ing. She al­so crit­i­cised his lead­er­ship, call­ing it a fail­ure in crime, health­care, in­fra­struc­ture, and the econ­o­my, while ac­cus­ing him of de­stroy­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, and democ­ra­cy with­in his par­ty. She in­sist­ed that the pri­or­i­ty now is to call a gen­er­al elec­tion and move past Row­ley’s “wretched” lead­er­ship to re­build Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fu­ture.

Row­ley dis­missed her claims and ac­cused her and MP Roodal Mooni­lal of pre­vi­ous­ly urg­ing the US gov­ern­ment to sanc­tion him and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young while they worked to se­cure a gas sup­ply deal with Venezuela and an OFAC li­cence from the US. "Well, this is an even more un­pa­tri­ot­ic act!" he said.

He de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­marks as "an ill-ad­vised, di­rect at­tack on the Maduro Gov­ern­ment," ar­gu­ing that she in­tend­ed to pro­voke Venezuela in­to aban­don­ing favourable agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go. He warned that her call for US ac­tion against Venezuela could threat­en the coun­try’s fu­ture gas sup­ply. "How un­pa­tri­ot­ic can this ca­bal get!" he asked.

Mock­ing her use of the term “klep­to­crat­ic,” he said, "The on­ly good thing about this is that we now know that she knows the word." He added, "It means steal­ing from the pub­lic purse. Imag­ine UNC per­sons us­ing that word against Maduro, or any­body for that mat­ter."

Row­ley ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her par­ty of try­ing to harm the coun­try. "What will this klep­to­crat­ic ca­bal not do in an ef­fort to harm the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go?" he asked.