Raphael John-Lall

Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­an José Brito has joined Cara­cas in con­demn­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for sup­port­ing US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean.

Brito, a mem­ber of the op­po­si­tion par­ty Primero Venezuela, made the re­marks dur­ing a de­bate in Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly last week.

His com­ments fol­low es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween Cara­cas and Port-of-Spain, which in­clude a trav­el ban pre­vent­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar from en­ter­ing Venezuela and crit­i­cism from se­nior Venezue­lan of­fi­cials over T&T’s grow­ing al­liance with the Unit­ed States.

“They gen­er­ate dis­gust when they sur­ren­der to the most per­verse in­ter­ests. I’m talk­ing, among oth­ers, about the new Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Brito said. “This la­dy open­ly says they should con­tin­ue killing cit­i­zens, hu­man be­ings, shoot­ing in the Caribbean, even when two of the de­ceased are of Trinida­di­an na­tion­al­i­ty.”

Brito al­so de­scribed T&T as “dis­loy­al,” cit­ing Venezuela’s long­stand­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with this coun­try. He ac­cused the twin-is­land na­tion of al­low­ing its ter­ri­to­ry to be used as a base for hos­tile op­er­a­tions against Venezuela, Colom­bia, and oth­ers who “raise their voice of dig­ni­ty.”

The par­lia­men­tar­i­an fur­ther de­nounced ex­trem­ist el­e­ments with­in Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion, call­ing them “cock­roach­es.”

He said, “Those worms are the ones who think that by crawl­ing they can get perks. In the end, they will be stepped on, like cock­roach­es. And re­mem­ber, cock­roach­es are not avoid­ed out of fear but out of dis­gust.”

Brito con­clud­ed his re­marks by ad­dress­ing Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar di­rect­ly, quot­ing Mex­i­can rev­o­lu­tion­ary Emil­iano Za­p­a­ta: “If you want to be an ea­gle, fly high. If you want to be a worm, go and crawl. But don’t scream when they step on you.”