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Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), David Ab­du­lah, has crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of re­cent al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing Venezuela, urg­ing a mea­sured re­sponse ground­ed in diplo­ma­cy rather than spec­u­la­tion.

Speak­ing at a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ab­du­lah said the Gov­ern­ment should have re­spond­ed more cau­tious­ly to Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s claims, rather than es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions through re­ac­tionary state­ments.

“Rather than have, you know, state­ments that go back­wards and for­wards, ratch­et­ing up the tem­per­a­tures, what ought to have hap­pened is ac­tu­al­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go, af­ter the first state­ment by Pres­i­dent Maduro, should sim­ply have said, ‘We have not­ed that state­ment and we are now seek­ing to get in­for­ma­tion from Venezuela about this in­ci­dent that they have re­port­ed,’” Ab­du­lah said.