WE REJECT ROWLEY

REJECTED!

This was the view of Deputy to the Venezuelan National Assembly Carlos Enrique Valero who yesterday took to his twitter account,
@CarlosValero08, to condemn and outright reject Prime Minister Dr Rowley and the TT government for its continued "support" of the Nicolás Maduro government in Venezuela.

Head of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó has declared himself interim President of Venezuela and has the support of the European Union (EU), Canada, the United States and several other major world nations. Maduro has the support of Russia and China and more importantly, the Venezuelan military.

Valero first issued a release to the Trinidad and Tobago public last week, thanking the government and police for the rescue of 19 Spanish-speaking girls during a sex raid last Wednesday in several parts of Trinidad including Westmoorings, Ariapita Avenue and Curepe. Eighteen suspects, including several Asian men, were detained.

"We thank the Government of Trinidad and Tobago for ensuring the human rights of adolescents and allowing them to communicate with their families and/or lawyers," Valero wrote last week. He said that about 19 "presumably Venezuelan adolescents" were rescued from a sex ring in TT.

However, Valero sought to clarify his position with a new message on his twitter account yesterday. "#URGENT On a misinterpretation given to a tweet that I posted expressing my concern about a group of alleged Venezuelan girls that were rescued after having been kidnapped in Trinidad&Tobago. Please spread the word," Valero wrote.

He said that on learning of the rescue of the girls, he as Deputy to the Venezuelan National Assembly expressed his thoughts on the matter.

"My words not only had the intention of informing the Venezuelan public opinion about what was happening to our girls in Trinidad & Tobago given the fact that in our country these type of news are censored by Maduro’s regime, but also to exhort the Trinidadian government to guarantee all the human rights to our compatriots in this difficult situation and the above-mentioned tweets can confirm that."

Valero then got to the meat of the matter. "Our position with respect to the Prime Minister, Keith Rowley, is nothing but of deep rejection to inhuman treatment that our compatriots have received from his regime. He has been the accomplice of Nicolás Maduro at denying the never-seen-before migratory crisis that our country is going through and at giving him (Maduro) his support in international forums.

"I am writing this letter in order to reject the misinterpretation that has arisen in the media which apparently started to spread after a bad translation by the Trinidadian press." (The original story on Valero thanking the TT police and government for the girls' rescue was reported in the Trinidad Express newspaper.)

"Nevertheless, we do appreciate the efforts made by the Trinidadian authorities to bring to an end the nightmare our girls were living, and we encourage them to continue to work for the prevalence of human rights," Valero said as he ended his twitter post.

The TT government's official stance is one of neutrality and non-interference in the internal politics of Venezuela although TT's Foreign and Caricom Affairs Minister Dennis Moses quietly flew to Caracas on Monday January 10, to attend the inauguration of Maduro to his second term as President.

Rowley on January 28, joined a Caricom team comprising Barbados PM Mia Mottley and St Kitts and Nevis PM Dr Timothy Harris (the chairman of Caricom) to New York where they met with United Nations (UN) secretary-general Antonio Guterres to advance Caricom's position of non-interference with Venezuela's internal politics and trying to arrive at a peaceful resolution to the political crisis.

Last Wednesday, Rowley and the Caricom delegation went to Uruguay to have talks with European and Latin American countries which share Caricom's neutral stance on the political crisis in Venezuela. Efforts to reach Rowley for a comment last night proved futile.