Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) claimed vin­di­ca­tion af­ter years of warn­ing the PNM Gov­ern­ment against “get­ting in bed” with the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion on en­er­gy deals. The re­vo­ca­tion of li­cences by the US for the Drag­on Gas and Cocuina Man­akin fields has, ac­cord­ing to the UNC, left for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley and cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s “cuck­oo cooked.”

UNC’s Tabaquite can­di­date Sean Sobers and Ca­roni Cen­tral can­di­date David Lee made the state­ments at Tues­day's UNC meet­ing in Mara­bel­la.

Ear­li­er that day, Young an­nounced the US had re­voked Trinidad and To­ba­go’s OFAC li­cences for both en­er­gy fields. The de­vel­op­ment dom­i­nat­ed the UNC’s plat­form that evening.

UNC Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts opened the meet­ing by de­clar­ing, “We 'all in' with love, care and Kam­la, un­like PNM, dem all in with pot­holes, crime and with the Drag­on—it gone! Lay all your eggs in one bas­ket and Drag-gone. Just like PNM will be gone April 28!"

Sobers said the UNC was not cel­e­brat­ing the Drag­on Gas project’s demise.

“You can find no clip of a UNC mem­ber that ever said we had a prob­lem with Drag­on Gas. What we said is we had a prob­lem with Maduro, deal­ing with the Venezue­lan ad­min­is­tra­tion, and that it would be a geopo­lit­i­cal night­mare to place T&T’s fu­ture in one bas­ket!”

He point­ed out that both De­mo­c­ra­t­ic and Re­pub­li­can US gov­ern­ments had tar­get­ed Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

“And you do­ing con­ga line with the man for the last 10 years—what did you ex­pect to hap­pen?! If you were think­ing about T&T’s fu­ture, you’d have di­ver­si­fied T&T! Every sin­gle speech about re-en­er­gis­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor has been con­nect­ed to Drag­on Gas. The past Prime Min­is­ter al­ways mocked di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion… look where you have us to­day!”

“Enough is enough! The time for gam­bling, whe whe and ole talk done!” Sobers added, say­ing the coun­try's fu­ture now hinges on what vot­ers do on April 28.

He con­tin­ued, “What we’re see­ing and feel­ing through­out T&T is a re­peat in some small mea­sure—and I say small mea­sure—of 2010. In 2010, they get licks like peas, but what I’ve fore­seen and fore­cast for April 28 will be even greater than 2010—33/3 will be a joke af­ter April 28! There will be no seat left for PNM!” He pre­dict­ed UNC’s San Fer­nan­do East can­di­date John Al­i­bo­cus would “take (PNM's) Bri­an Man­ning’s wick­et.”

“This mam­moth crowd here is tes­ta­ment to (what will hap­pen), the mam­moth crowd in Barataria on Mon­day was tes­ta­ment of it. The tremen­dous sup­port last Sat­ur­day in Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence—over 12,000 peo­ple came to a UNC meet­ing… yes, we pro­vid­ed a lil trans­port and thing, but if you see cars!”