Earlier this week the Venezuelan Embassy in Georgetown issued a statement giving itself a huge pat on the back over the delivery by Caracas of 16,000 barrels of gasoline and diesel in response to an appeal by the Government of Guyana.
The release itself was, to say the least, most unusual since it is far from commonplace for an embassy in a host capital to make such immodest utterances on the back of what, admittedly, was a positive gesture in difficult circumstances.
The release asserted that Venezuela’s gesture “had helped the people of Guyana avoid a fuel crisis” which, it said, “had already begun to be noticed” and credits the gesture to “Venezuela’s politics of cooperation and solidarity.”
There are two interesting features of the release issued by the Venezuelan Embassy in Georgetown. First, it spares no pains in singing the praises of the Chavez administration – a highly unusual approach in circumstances where there is really little to be gained by making such a song and dance anyway. The second feature, of course, is the timing of the release. It comes just days after Venezuela’s latest violation of Guyana’s territorial integrity and the blowing up of two Guyanese-operated dredges plying their trade in Guyana’s waters.
It is quite obvious that the release labours under the apprehension that Venezuela’s intervention to avoid – as the release puts it – “a crisis”- is more than sufficient reason to cause the military incursion to go away. It is as if Venezuela now assumes that Guyana is so inconsequential that territorial incursion or otherwise we really ought to be eternally grateful for a neighbour who, as the release puts it, seeks “to work for the economic and social integration of the people of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The real truth, of course, is that there is good reason to worry over a situation in which Guyana is required to turn to Venezuela for supplies of a commodity as vital to social and economic life as fuel in circumstances where – for all the platitudes about good neighbourliness and peaceful coexistence – Venezuela continues to make periodic air and land incursions into Guyana’s territory and – on this particular occasion – to attack and destroy property.
Up to almost a week following the incident Guyana was yet to receive a response to its diplomatic note dispatched to Caracas and at any rate the Venezuelan Ambassador in Georgetown has already dropped a broad hint as to the kind of response that Georgetown can anticipate by rejecting the charge that any incursion actually took place.
What we must hope is that the 16.000 barrels of oil and all the high-sounding expressions of goodwill embodied in the release issued by Ambassador Dario Morandy does nothing to diminish the vigour and energy with which Georgetown will first, pursue a response from Caracas on this latest violation of Guyana’s territorial integrity and, secondly, seek – as is part of the customary response in these situations – to bring the matter to the attention of the international community.
