Caption: Venezuela’s Minister of Interior Relations, Justice, and Peace, Diosdado Cabello
By Alicia Chamely
HE’S a madman.
This was the response of Minister of Homeland Security Roger Alexander when questioned how he felt about Venezuela’s Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello referring to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar as a drunk.
Alexander was speaking on Thursday at the weekly post-cabinet press conference held at the Diplomatic Centre, St. Ann’s.
Asked for his response to Cabello’s comment, Alexander bluntly said, “I’ll call him a madman.”
Pushed to expand, and asked if he found Cabello’s statement offensive, Alexander said, “Of course! You don’t call persons names. We don’t do that here.”
“If he could identify her as that, probably he’s like that too, or he’s a madman,” he continued.
Alexander said, “It will be fair to him if I say to him, because of what is happening now with the United States, he is facilitating drugs in his country. Is he a drug pusher? Is he a pimp?”
“So, you see where we could go with this,” Alexander tersely said before asking if there were any more questions.
Speaking on Venezuelan television on Wednesday night, Cabello, who previously had been critical of Persad-Bissessar’s allegiance to the United States of America in their military exercise against Latin American drug cartels, referred to the “drunk woman” governing Trinidad and Tobago.
Cabello took issue with the prime minister’s support of US forces attacking a Venezuelan vessel on Tuesday, belonging to the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
In the aftermath of the attack, Persad-Bissessar said, “Our country has been ravaged by bloody violence and addiction because of the greed of the cartels. The slaughter of our people is fuelled by evil cartel traffickers. The pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense. I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all violently.”
Cabello, who also referred to Dominican Republic President Luis Rodolfo Abinader Corona. He had said “This is just starting. For example, the stupid crook who governs the Dominican Republic and the drunk woman who governs Trinidad, when they arrive and leave a drunk they side with this attack, they are condemning their people to be executed at sea. Their fishermen are being condemned to execution.”
