Beyond Sanctions
With COVID-19 grinning with death masks at our borders (having already claimed some 303,000 lives, infected over 4.5 million people, and locked down billions globally (May 15) our tiny islands should be planning how to survive a pandemic– investing in health care as per the advice of the World Health Organisation given the growing uncertainty of finding a vaccine.
Instead, we face the spectre of Trump-led US sanctions for contravening the Rio Treaty as if we were run not by leaders of a sovereign land but treated like boys in short pants by the superpower.
In September last year 16 of 19 countries at a meeting convened by the Organization of American States (OAS) agreed to economic sanctions against Venezuelan President Maduro. T&T abstained, concerned about US military intervention in Venezuela but was bound by it anyway.
The Government should have been transparent about the leaked March meeting between PM Dr Rowley and Ministers of National Security and Foreign Affairs with a Venezuelan delegation that included Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.
National Security Minister Stewart Young denies knowledge that the Venezuelans flew in on a plane owned by Venezuela’s state oil company Petroleos De Venezuela, SA (PDVSA) (also subject to US sanctions) giving rise to dangerous speculation that talks surrounded not COVID-19, as claimed, but oil and gas.
Opposition Leader Persad-Bissessar has flagged and flogged the meeting like an unwitting acolyte doing her homework for Big Brother, detailing possible sanctions in minutiae which could goad Trump, a world leader as mercurial and deadly as COVID-19, to bring down hellish retribution upon us.
The PM and his team remain culpable for fudging information to the people, and more recently, for lashing out at this paper, and the Opposition Leader stands on shaky moral grounds as an editorial in this paper noted, recalling her support for President Nicolas Maduro when she was Prime Minister, declaring that her “about-face seems nothing but political expediency.”
A government commentator weighing in on the imbroglio says sanctions have everything to do with the Trump administration wielding global control and nothing to do with “moral suasion.”
“The Maduro administration– not the Guaido faction–is recognised by the UN as the legitimate Government in Venezuela. US sanctions have nothing to do with the morality of the Maduro Government–but about installing a Guaido puppet regime and Washington’s eventual control of Venezuela’s abundant oil reserves. It has always been about the US dollar and never about stability. As the world’s largest weapons exporter, American firms made $192.3 billion from arms sales in 2018, contributing to armed conflict worldwide.
“Persad-Bissessar, in her cynical bid for power, is raising the question of sanctions that would reduce us to Venezuela-type conditions with hyperinflation and widespread poverty. Sanctions will equal wartime like rationing as we have never seen. No amount of money will mean anything. Every aspect of our daily lives will be rationed, regardless of our money or social status: Every day there will be little food, little gas, a horrendous, struggling life of just a little of everything.”
On a heartening note, a top T&T commercial legal luminary does not believe the US will impose sanctions on T&T.
“The US knows precisely what had gone on in terms of the transaction, who came to Trinidad before they landed and if there was an oil deal. If they wanted to do anything, they could have done it already. “What are the consequences for T&T apart from the chastening rap on our knuckles from the US Embassy? At worst, it could mean a changed election date according to this legal mind.
“Just before the story of this meeting broke there was the buzz about September elections with the PNM riding high on their COVID win and before the money runs out. Now elections could be pushed to December. The story of Persad-Bissessar being a traitor was getting traction, and with the PM being less than transparent, the tables have turned. Both sides are going to wring this.”
He believes at best, this storm still contained in a teacup, could be an opportunity we should have explored long ago.
“The question now is: ‘Why are we looking at Trump with his disastrous foreign policy to be a moral compass to our country?’ The US may have issues with Venezuela, but why are we dragged in? CARICOM countries must, with our 15 votes, form further strategic alliances with other countries developed and emerging economies to stand up for ourselves, to protect ourselves as Trump regularly oversteps his bounds.”
Those two opinions have convinced me that as civic citizens, we must unify to steer our politicians away from playing with sanctions (that could prove worse than COVID-19), firmly back towards terraferma to protect us from the silent advance of the virus’s companions of death, disease, poverty and mayhem.