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Today’s controversy re: our current relations with Venezuela and the positions taken up by the Prime Minister and the Vice-President of Venezuela, the aggressive, sometimes questionable, undiplomatic utterances coming from both sides, ought to be of serious concern to all of us. Our Prime Minister’s recent statement in the Express on Wednesday, October 22, 2025, “Maybe Caricom countries can speak to their friends in Caracas to take back 200 Venezuelan criminals from Trinidad.” Is it that we no longer have friends in Caracas? The Venezuelan Vice-President was equally aggressive and undiplomatic in response to our Prime Minister, making it absolutely clear that T&T’s energy-based economy was dependent on Venezuelan energy supplies and the consequences that the unavailability could have on the T&T economy. From my own knowledge and experience, the relationship between our two countries has never been worse. Premiere Dr Eric Williams, Inward Hunger (Page 106) stated: “In July 1959 a goodwill mission from Venezuela toured T&T and we were able to explore various difficulties, particularly the 30% surtax imposed by the Venezuelan government on goods from T&T and the problems of our fishermen on both countries in the Gulf of Paria. “We reciprocated by sending a follow-up mission to Venezuela from August 20-27, 1959. I had the honour of meeting President Betancourt who pledged that the surtax will be removed. I in my turn made it clear that T&T would not allow its soil to be used as a base for subversive [activities] against Venezuela. The surtax was eventually removed in 1966.” I make reference to this historical event almost 65 years ago in the context of the current relationship between our two countries. The problem is who and what is responsible for this. I understand only too well our Prime Minister’s concern, her commitment to the safety and security of all our citizens. As an experienced politician, a former Prime minister, she is fully aware of the international problems of mass migration. Day after day, hundreds, sometimes thousands of human beings risk their lives in search of a better standard of living, in progressive, developed and developing countries, wherever they are, whatever the risk; like ourselves, these countries have to find answers, most of the time consistent with international conventions. This mass migration is nothing new to us. We experienced it during the early 20th century with the origin and development of our energy industry with migrants from the combined islands. We also experienced it during the second World War with the construction of the American naval bases. What is so different today? The Prime Minister knows the answer to this question. In my view, and in several opinions expressed both nationally and internationally by diplomats and foreign relation experts, the Government’s reason/justification for its allegiance and support for US President Trump and the USA’s agenda and its massive military appearance in the region and southern Caribbean Sea leaves us with more questions than answers. Like our Caricom neighbours, we are concerned about the real intentions and objectives of the President and the US, and the preservation of the South Caribbean Sea as a Zone of Peace. The drug and human-trafficking problems have been with us as long as we can remember. What is now new to us is the conduct/misconduct of the most powerful man in the world leading the most powerful country in the world, a leader who is now considered to be the most dangerous man on the planet—unpredictable, unreliable, reckless, irresponsible, ungrateful, inconsistent, a leader without compassion for his own country and his fellowmen. Any elementary student of history/international affairs knows only too well that the US military advancement in our zone of peace has very little or nothing at all to do with drug trafficking. It’s all about Maduro and Venezuela’s energy resources, which we too are very interested in. The US President is interested in Maduro and these resources; Maduro is Venezuela’s business, the gas is our business. For our Prime Minister to be so supportive of this unpredictable and unreliable President is completely in contrast to our history of neutrality since our Independence of 1962, our historical Good Neighbour Policy (GNP) with Venezuela over the past 199 years. Long after President Trump and our Prime Minister are gone, Venezuela and ourselves will have to live together as we have done in the past. I am therefore respectfully appealing to our Prime Minister to reconsider her Government’s position on this now highly controversial issue. Failure to act responsibly and objectively in the national interest can have consequences that are unimaginable. —Author Ferdie Ferreira is a PNM foundation member.
