There was no shortage of strange statements on the border last week. There was Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo telling the media on Friday that Guyana’s military manoeuvres were not the way to proceed. “One thing we must not do, though, we must never allow Venezuela to argue that we are a belligerent nation by the signals that we send,” we quoted him as saying. Is he serious? Caracas is only too well aware of our Lilliputian-scale military capabilities, and could hardly argue that we were the ones threatening military action without becoming an international laughing stock.
Mr Jagdeo went on to say that “if we start sending images across the world of troops carrying guns then we undermine the strength of small countries, which is diplomacy and multilateralism and not going to war.” Going to war? Perhaps he has forgotten that it is Venezuela which is in our river and which has been sending anti-aircraft missiles to the border in a situation where we don’t even have a fighter plane or a bomber to our name. How can a small country which has distributed photos of its forces in fatigues armed with AK47s be interpreted as suggesting we would be initiating a war against a nation with Sukhoi fighter jets, gunboats and the like? And as for photos, images of Venezuela’s missiles being trucked to the frontier are all over the internet.
And what does the Opposition Leader think we should be doing? It seems he regards it as important for Presidents Granger and Maduro to hold talks to ease tensions and restore trade, particularly in relation to rice. Leaving aside his misrepresentations in respect of the rice issue, he does not seem to have grasped yet that trying to pet this particular tiger is likely to make it more irascible and demanding, not less so. In short, appeasement in these situations is rarely, if ever, the answer.
The implication of what the Opposition Leader said is that the two heads of state should meet one-on-one. It was Justice Duke Pollard who in a letter in our edition yesterday expressed the view that Venezuela’s current nonsense represented an attempt to intimidate President Granger into a bilateral meeting with President Maduro. If that is so, then there would have to be some further objective which in the eyes of Caracas would make a meeting in this format necessary. It could only be (as was suggested in these columns earlier this year) that Venezuela at all costs wants to prevent a recourse to the International Court of Justice in The Hague where the controversy is concerned. It has no expectation that it would win there, which is why over the years it has so vigorously resisted that route to a resolution.
Perhaps it is that in a one-on-one situation with Mr Granger, Mr Maduro could issue threats if Guyana would not return to the Good Officer process; such threats would compromise him if someone like UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon were present. It is possible, however, he might instead offer some deal if Guyana agreed to be compliant, or then again, maybe he would use a combination of the carrot and the stick to achieve his end. Whatever President Maduro might have in mind, if President Granger does decide to meet him, one presumes it would be in a context where the Secretary General mediated.
What can be said is that if this country ever looks as if it might succeed in relation to the ICJ route, a very unpredictable Venezuelan President would become even more unpredictable, and we should expect further irrationality to follow. (It might be noted in passing that our situation would be no better if the Venezuelan opposition win control of the National Assembly, or if somewhere down the line they win the presidency. For both sides of the Venezuelan divide, a trek to the ICJ would be like an end game which therefore would have to be resisted at all costs.)
But to return to Mr Jagdeo: He was completely justified in relation to one of his complaints. He told the media that the opposition party, the PPP/C, had not yet been briefed on current developments by the administration. If there is one area above all others where the government has to demonstrate its much-touted inclusiveness, it is this one; this is a national issue, not a partisan one, and to underline that fact the Opposition Leader reiterated his party’s commitment to the government on border matters. It is unacceptable that after a week, the opposition still has not been called in to be brought up to date on what is happening. This is in a context, as Mr Jagdeo pointed out, where moves towards the setting up of a parliamentary committee on the borders have not yet begun.
If it is some small consolation to the Leader of the Opposition, the government did a very poor job of communicating with the public too, and they had some strange statements of their own. In the first place, it took them until Tuesday before anything was said, and this despite the fact that the Venezuelan ‘exercises’ were all over the internet during the weekend. It was President Granger himself who informed the media about it, and what he had to say, although brief, a least covered the outline of what was happening, and was the most the country was officially told that day.
Unfortunately, however, he made no official statement to the nation, and his remarks came in the context of the swearing-in of the PPP Gecom commissioners, which was not the ideal time, place or circumstance. Thereafter, all attempts to get an official – or the army ‒ to put some meat on the bones supplied by the Head of State proved futile. No one said that a strongly worded protest note had been dispatched to Venezuela, or that identified international bodies and organizations, as well as individual countries had been notified. All was silence until at length, after hours had passed, an official statement emerged from the Ministry of the Presidency.
If the nation was looking for information from that, it was to be disappointed. Its essential message was that Guyanese near the frontier were not to panic, and Guyanese elsewhere were to remain calm. Now the residents of this country are not children, and they are not in the habit of panicking because the Venezuelans are charging up and down the Cuyuni. In the mind of the average Guyanese, bandits with their ubiquitous Taurus pistols are more of a concern than the missiles next door. Furthermore, citizens are entitled to know from their government what is going on; we live in the age of the internet, and they will find out anyway.
By the next day it seems it had begun to dawn on the authorities that perhaps they should hold a press conference. Minister of State Joseph Harmon did the honours, although he was not that expansive. While he said the government would be ‘communicating’ with Caracas, he did not say what kind of diplomatic note would be sent, or why it had not yet been sent. Chief of Staff Brigadier Mark Phillips was somewhat more forthcoming, while Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman was the third speaker. And in addition to other remarks he made, what did he have to say? Oh yes, ‘Don’t panic.’
At least there was one official who has heard about the internet, and that is Foreign Minister Carl Greenidge. It is true he was out of the country on Tuesday, but that should not have prevented him from issuing a statement about the steps his ministry was taking in response to the Venezuelan aggression. However, what he did was say a few words on social media, the link to which was forwarded by Gina to this newspaper, at least, around 8.30pm on Tuesday evening.
It hardly qualified as a statement, but in case that was what it was intended to be, since when do ministers make important statements on social media when they haven’t communicated the government’s position through official channels first? Or was it that he intended Gina to transcribe what he said for distribution to the media? If so, they didn’t do it.
All in all, the events of last week brought to public attention the fact that the government’s PR is seemingly in disarray.
