President David Granger’s address to the Heads at the opening of the Caricom summit in Barbados last week was a tour de force. In addition to a beautifully crafted speech, the President conveyed a greater sense of gravitas than his immediate predecessors Mr Donald Ramotar or Mr Bharrat Jagdeo could have mustered. And in these circumstances appearances matter.
Guyana went to the conference not long after Venezuela had issued Decree No 1787, claiming not just all this country’s maritime space off the Essequibo coast, and by implication reviving the claim to five-eighths of our land space in the process, but also some of the waters of Colombia, Barbados, Grenada, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, among others. It might be mentioned in passing that President Nicolás Maduro added impudence to gross illegality by appending his signature to the infamous decree on the day of Guyana’s Independence anniversary – May 26. It was, perhaps, symbolic of the fact that Venezuela has never permitted Guyana to enjoy true economic independence where Essequibo is concerned, and was not of a mind to change direction where that was concerned.
What was at issue at the summit, as David Jessop pointed out in his column in this newspaper two weeks ago, was the strength of the final Caricom statement on the matter. Would Venezuela’s PetroCaribe largesse to Caribbean nations operate to suppress their natural instinct to give Guyana robust support, as they traditionally had been wont to do? Initially, there were some prognostications that a more attenuated final communiqué than normal might indeed be what was issued, although that was not necessarily the view in Venezuela itself, with one writer in the Caracas press grumbling that PetroCaribe or no, Caricom always gave support to Guyana.
By this time, however, President Maduro had discovered that he may have stirred up something of a hornet’s nest, certainly with Guyana and Colombia, but also with Suriname too. According to a report in the Paramaribo daily de Ware Tijd, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Lackin summoned the Venezuelan ambassador to protest the claim on Suriname’s waters, and also sent a diplomatic note to Venezuela demanding it make a correction. When asked by the paper, among other things, whether Suriname would support Guyana, the Minister would not say. If nothing else, this, at least, would have given the Venezuelan Head of State some cause to indulge a mild feeling of buoyancy.
That notwithstanding, President Maduro was still not prepared to allow things to take their natural course, and through the agency of one of his Alba associates from an eastern Caribbean island in the first instance, managed to wangle himself an invitation to address the Caricom Heads at the summit. One would have hoped that Guyana would not have agreed to this, but from the later evolution of events one could infer that this may not have been the case. However, if Guyana did object and the invitation still went ahead, one would equally have hoped that President Granger would have refused to attend.
Be that as it may, Mr Maduro possibly felt some confidence that he would be entertained on the matter of addressing the Caricom leaders, considering that the PetroCaribe members had gathered only last weekend to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Fund, and to sign on to a renewal of the agreement. All Caricom states with the exception of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago are members of PetroCaribe, and some of the eastern Caribbean territories are also members of Alba. Guyana, of course, is in addition negotiating a renewal of the rice deal, the payment for which offsets a part of the oil debt to our western neighbour.
As a matter of caution, President Maduro postponed three times an address he was due to make to the Venezuelan House of Assembly on the ‘aggression’ of ExxonMobil and by extension Guyana, which had licensed the company to drill in ‘Essequibo’ waters. From the snippets of what he was going to say which escaped into the public domain, it was intended as a strongly worded speech. Of course, if he had plans to put in an appearance at the Caricom summit, he certainly would not have wanted to frighten the heads with vehement language directed against this country before he got there. As it is, summit over, the long awaited statement on Guyana and the Essequibo is now slated for tomorrow, although whether it will take the same form and be as uncompromising as initial reports had suggested it might be, remains to be seen.
In the event, the Venezuelan Head of State never showed his face in Barbados at all; he sent his Vice-President, Jorge Arreaza instead. Two things probably gave him pause for thought. The first was an unequivocal statement emanating from the Commonwealth in support of Guyana which was made public last Sunday, and the second was President Granger’s address at the summit opening. During the course of his presentation, Mr Granger adverted the attention of the assembled heads to the fact that the Venezuelan decree had “dire implications for the entire Region but most particularly, the eastern tier of states…”
This was a reference to the decree’s inclusion of Bird Island, on which Caracas has grounded its claim to the marine territory of many of the eastern Caribbean states, leaving them like islets adrift in a Venezuelan sea. The entire speech must have cornered the leaders; who among them after that, one wondered, could argue a case for taking a soft line with Caracas.
The President ended this part of his address with the impassioned plea: “We consider the issuance of the Decree by Venezuela as an act of aggression against Guyana’s sovereignty. It is an assault on our right to access and to develop our maritime resources. We ask this Conference to affirm its solidarity with Guyana to repudiate this Decree.” Since as of the time of writing, the official communiqué had not been issued, it is impossible to know whether in fact the Conference rose to the occasion and did “affirm its solidarity with Guyana.” If it did not, then the whole concept of Caricom is well on the road to betraying the vision of its founders.
As for Guyana, it should be casting around for ways to start weaning itself off its dependence on Venezuela for oil and to supply a ready market for its rice.
