STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has praised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her han­dling of is­sues at last week’s Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis, call­ing her ap­proach “prin­ci­pled” and sug­gest­ing she “has more balls” than her male coun­ter­parts in the re­gion.

Au­gus­tine high­light­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s analy­sis of the geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, say­ing she demon­strat­ed a su­pe­ri­or un­der­stand­ing of glob­al pow­er dy­nam­ics.

Dur­ing her ad­dress on Feb­ru­ary 24, Per­sad-Bisses­sar chas­tised Cari­com for fail­ing to de­fend Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana when Venezuela al­leged­ly threat­ened vi­o­lence. Au­gus­tine re­flect­ed on the events sur­round­ing US troops’ cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro on Jan­u­ary 3.

“Look­ing back at the whole sit­u­a­tion, we may have glossed over the fact that Maduro was tak­en and some of his strongest al­lies sud­den­ly went qui­et,” Au­gus­tine said. “The act­ing Venezuela Pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­driguez, changed her po­si­tion be­cause of US in­flu­ence. Per­haps the Prime Min­is­ter had more balls than all her male coun­ter­parts.”

He stressed that a more con­fronta­tion­al ap­proach could have jeop­ar­dized re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States, po­ten­tial­ly re­strict­ing visas or forc­ing the ac­cep­tance of de­por­tees who were not cit­i­zens. “The PM took a de­ci­sion based on the in­for­ma­tion she had. In hind­sight, it may have been the best de­ci­sion at the time,” Au­gus­tine said.

On es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions in the Mid­dle East fol­low­ing the US and Is­rael’s “pre-emp­tive” strike on Iran, which killed over 200 peo­ple, in­clud­ing Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ali Khamenei, Au­gus­tine said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) would re­main neu­tral.

“We leave the de­ci­sions on these mat­ters to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. The THA will con­tin­ue to take a neu­tral po­si­tion,” he said, not­ing that a 19-year-old To­bag­on­ian uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent is cur­rent­ly shel­ter­ing in Abu Dhabi af­ter the Iran­ian drone strike dam­aged Za­yed In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. Au­gus­tine said the THA will co­or­di­nate with the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs to en­sure the safe­ty of af­fect­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans and called for the re­in­state­ment of a To­ba­go desk at TT em­bassies abroad.