分类： politics

A new chapter of bilateral engagement between Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela is set to open this week, as a senior Trinidad and Tobago government delegation departs for Caracas for targeted working talks with senior Venezuelan officials, with an eye to deepening decades of friendship and collaboration across multiple sectors.

Led by Minister of Foreign and Caricom Affairs Sean Sobers, the delegation includes key senior diplomatic figures: permanent secretary and Head of the Foreign Service Randall Karim, and Claire de Bourg, acting Foreign Service Officer III and head of the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Americas Division. Alvaro Enrique Sanchez Cordero, Venezuela’s ambassador to Port of Spain, will also accompany the group during the visit, local media outlet Trinidad Express has confirmed.

The working visit will see the delegation hold formal discussions with Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign Relations and Foreign Trade Felix Plasencia and other top Venezuelan government representatives. Scheduled to depart Port of Spain on a Caribbean Airlines flight early Wednesday morning, the delegation is expected to return to Trinidad and Tobago the same evening. Beyond diplomatic talks, the mission carries a significant humanitarian component: the group will deliver three tonnes of medical and humanitarian aid collected by the Venezuelan Embassy in Trinidad and Tobago from donors across the twin-island nation. This donation marks the latest round of assistance from Port of Spain to Caracas, following a previous shipment of 230 tonnes of disaster relief supplies and additional air-freighted medical equipment sent after devastating earthquakes struck Venezuela in 2026.

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who first shared details of the visit with the Express, noted that the deep historical connection between the two nations is also personal: she has familial ties to Venezuela through her husband, Greg. She emphasized that the push to renew bilateral cooperation extends far beyond the energy sector, with opportunities for mutual gain in trade, agriculture, and other key areas that will benefit working people on both sides of the border.

“Our two countries share a long, intertwined history, and my administration is eager to reconnect and reignite the productive partnership that has served both our peoples for generations,” Persad-Bissessar said, recalling past cordial, productive meetings with senior Venezuelan officials including current interim president Delcy Rodriguez.

Sobers, for his part, credited Persad-Bissessar as the driving force behind the high-level meeting, pointing to her long-standing diplomatic relationships with both Venezuelan and United States officials that cleared the way for the current round of engagement. He recalled that during Persad-Bissessar’s first term as prime minister in 2011, her government advanced the implementation of the landmark cross-border agreement for the Loran-Manatee gas field between the two nations. More than 15 years later, under her current leadership, the agreement has come full circle, with major progress achieved in 2026, Sobers added.

Four core priority areas have been set for the bilateral discussions during Wednesday’s working visit. The two delegations will negotiate terms for expanded trade and economic cooperation, explore new partnerships in agriculture and fisheries, coordinate on national security priorities including maritime security, border management, and immigration, and advance plans for shared energy security and shared prosperity for both nations. Sobers explained that the working visit is the culmination of months of ongoing high-level talks between the two governments, which began after Persad-Bissessar and Rodriguez held an initial meeting in June 2026 in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes that prompted Trinidad and Tobago’s large-scale humanitarian relief effort. Following that meeting, the foreign ministries of both countries have worked to finalize the ambitious agenda for this week’s in-person talks.

The Trinidad and Tobago delegation’s visit comes just one day after a senior United States delegation met with Rodriguez in Caracas to formalize new cooperation agreements covering energy, mining, and commercial trade. International media reports confirm that US Energy Secretary Chris Wright oversaw the signing of the agreements, which involve major energy firms Chevron, ENI, and GE Vernova. Speaking alongside Rodriguez during the signing event, Wright stated that the eight new agreements represent tens of billions of dollars in new investment, calling them a critical first step to building peace, expanded opportunity, and widespread prosperity for the Venezuelan people. For her part, Rodriguez expressed hope that the major 65-billion-barrel oil production agreement signed between Venezuela and the United States on August 28 would deliver tangible benefits to the people of the United States as well as Venezuela.

A damning oversight hearing held by Trinidad and Tobago’s Joint Select Committee on National Security has pulled back the curtain on critical flaws in the country’s $10.13 million taxpayer-funded electronic monitoring program, where 300 ankle bracelets were deployed with non-cut-resistant straps that allowed multiple convicted offenders to remove their devices and flee. The issue was thrust into the national spotlight following the high-profile 2023 escape of convicted human trafficker Anthony Michael Smith, who absconded mid-trial before being recaptured months later, prompting a full overhaul of the insecure legacy system.

During the committee’s public proceedings, Energy Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal raised the high-stakes case of Smith, a man who made history as the first person convicted under Trinidad and Tobago’s landmark Trafficking in Persons Act. Smith’s legal saga stretched back to a 2015 police raid in Arouca that led to his initial charges. When his trial finally opened in September 2023, he walked away from court after just two days of testimony, having cut through his non-resistant monitoring strap. He was convicted in absentia on five counts of child trafficking on November 2, 2023, and sentenced to 15 concurrent years in prison, and remained at large until a police operation captured him in February 2024.

Lawrence Hinds, manager of the country’s Electronic Monitoring Unit, told committee members that an internal review launched after Smith’s escape confirmed the original devices were wholly unsuitable for monitoring high-risk offenders. When pressed about why the flawed equipment was put into use, Hinds initially noted his team had been “pushed” to deploy the devices, before clarifying that the final decision to place offenders on electronic monitoring rests exclusively with the judiciary, even when technical staff formally advise against the practice for high-risk individuals.

“All we can do is submit our recommendation to the court. We are bound by their final decision,” Hinds explained. “If the court rules for monitoring regardless of our concerns, we cannot refuse to implement it.”

The original monitoring system was first procured in 2021 via an international tender awarded to Allied Universal Systems Ltd in partnership with former collaborator Attenti Systems, with 300 devices acquired at the $10.13 million total price tag. The unit was first established in 2017, but legislative gaps delayed full operationalization for four years. The initial inventory included devices designed for a range of supervision scenarios: domestic violence cases, juvenile monitoring, and home curfew enforcement, all fitted with multiple tracking sensors—but none featured cut-resistant ankle straps. As the profile of offenders placed into the program shifted toward higher-risk individuals in recent years, the equipment’s vulnerabilities became unavoidable.

Hinds confirmed that Smith had worn his monitoring device without incident for years while his case wound through the court system. His escape unfolded on the Republic Day public holiday, when he left his approved residence and traveled toward the Priority Bus Route, where he tampered with the strap. The device triggered an immediate alarm, and monitoring unit staff followed all standard operating protocols but were unable to locate Smith before referring the case to national police.

In addition to Smith, Hinds confirmed four other monitored offenders have successfully cut their devices and absconded to date, underscoring the scope of the system’s failures.

Following the escape and subsequent risk assessment, the government has moved forward with a multi-phase system upgrade that will replace all legacy equipment with new devices fitted with cut-resistant steel cuffs. The upgrade, which is already in its third phase, added 150 new secure devices in 2024 at additional cost to taxpayers. Once the transition is complete, the entire original flawed system will be permanently decommissioned and discarded, with all future monitoring conducted exclusively on the upgraded platform.

Hinds noted that the new steel cuffs, while far more secure, come at a significantly higher per-unit cost. The monitoring unit’s new policy prioritizes placing all offenders, regardless of assessed risk, on the steel-cuff devices to eliminate the vulnerability posed by the older straps, with high-risk cases specifically assigned to the upgraded technology.

To date, the Electronic Monitoring Unit has received more than 501 monitoring requests from the judiciary, with 168 cases approved and activated. Ninety-six individuals have already completed their required monitoring periods and exited the program. Hinds added that the unit enforces basic eligibility criteria: all monitored people must live at a residence with consistent access to electricity, and cannot have pre-existing health conditions that would make wearing the ankle device unsafe or impractical.

A sharp political firestorm has erupted in Trinidad and Tobago after former Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley publicly denounced sitting Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s recent Independence Day addresses as overtly racist and intentionally destructive to the country’s multi-ethnic social fabric.

In a social media post published to Facebook on Saturday, Rowley did not mince words, accusing Persad-Bissessar of stoking deep-seated racial and class division across the nation and demanding she issue a immediate public apology for what he labeled “vile, racist rubbish” that undermines the country’s hard-won peace, economic progress and political stability.

Rowley argued that since Persad-Bissessar’s administration returned to power, her agenda has not been focused on building on previous policy foundations or fulfilling campaign promises of improved quality of life for all Trinidadians and Tobagonians. Instead, he characterized the prime minister as a bitter, vengeful politician who is determined to exact retribution against demographic groups she blames for her party’s 10 years out of office.

While Rowley acknowledged that policy disagreements and subpar cabinet appointments are par for the course in partisan politics, he drew a firm line at the content of Persad-Bissessar’s 2026 Independence Day messages – especially coming one year after she canceled the national 2025 Independence celebration. Rowley stressed that this controversy is far beyond the gentle political ribbing known locally as “picong” and amounts to unvarnished racism and a deliberate divide-and-conquer strategy.

At the core of Rowley’s criticism is Persad-Bissessar’s recent appeal to rural Indo-Trinidadian communities, where she reportedly urged the group to feel a separate sense of national recognition and to push back against other groups that she claimed have marginalized low-income Indians for generations. Rowley pushed back against this framing, noting that poverty and hardship have touched all ethnic groups across the country, not just one community.

“This is naked racism and the worst form of divide and rule,” Rowley wrote. “She somehow believes that she is now in a position and entitled to call out one section of the population to utilise jingoism against the rest. This is dangerous politics in any multi-racial or multi-ethnic society. History is replete with examples of this experiment which has failed on every occasion but in many has taken peaceful societies down slippery slopes from which they never recovered.”

Rowley emphasized that none of Trinidad and Tobago’s six previous heads of government, nor any of its presidents or governors-general, have ever attempted to undermine the country’s inclusive social contract in such a calculated, harmful way. For decades, he noted, the nation’s greatest strength has been the social harmony it has built across its diverse population. Now, he claimed, Persad-Bissessar is intentionally targeting that foundational unity for destruction, and the opposition will not stand by and allow this pattern of division to continue.