Dear Editor,
Long before the just concluded meeting of Caricom Foreign Ministers in Barbados there must have been intense lobbying by some large and influential member states of the OAS in the capitals of Caricom member states, including Georgetown.
The intense lobbying had to do with the situation in Venezuela and the move by some member states of the OAS to expel Venezuela from the hemispheric body and to support a resolution calling for regime change in Guyana’s western neighbour.
Not since the mid-1960s was a member state expelled from the OAS.
It was in preparation for an OAS Ministerial meeting in Washington and later, the OAS General Assembly(GA) slated for Cancun, Mexico that Caricom foreign ministers met to coordinate foreign policy positions on a number of matters including the question of Venezuela.
At the Barbados meeting, Caricom’s greatest collective strength, its multilateralism, failed once again to reach consensus on the question of Venezuela due to a host of conflicting endogenous and exogenous factors.
Guyana, Jamaica, St Lucia and the Bahamas were unsupportive of a call to support the Government of Venezuela and to take a united stand against outside interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs.
By teaming up with Jamaica, St Lucia and the Bahamas, the Government of Guyana demonstrated where it stood ideologically. Its balancing act no doubt, was strongly influenced by geostrategic considerations, the politics of the border controversy with Venezuela and the new exogenous ExxonMobil factor.
As a warning shot to Caricom and the OAS indicating where it stood on the matter, the US government announced targeted sanctions against a battery of Venezuelan judges who were responsible for the passage of a law suspending the Venezuelan parliament. Their US visas were revoked and their bank accounts in the US were frozen, notwithstanding the fact that the law suspending the parliament was revoked just days after it came into effect.
The current OAS General Secretary, instead of playing the role of a consensus builder within the hemispheric body, went into overdrive openly demonstrating a bellicose and hostile attitude towards Venezuela, a diplomatic phenomenon unheard of since the 1960s insofar as OAS relations with sovereign and independent member states is concerned.
The OAS General Secretary’s position, along with that of a coalition of anti-Maduro member states, have contributed in no small way to the lack of unity and solidarity among OAS members, resulting in the emergence of uncalled for pro and anti-Venezuela sentiments within the hemispheric body. Diplomacy it seemed, was inclined to give way to heavy verbal artillery across borders reminiscent of the Cold War era.
And Guyana, by playing the old Burnham-style foreign policy balancing act found itself objectively in the anti-Maduro camp from fear of being perceived by the US as being leftist and pro- socialist. Their game plan was to damage the PPP/C by casting it in that mode in the eyes of the ABC countries and the rest of the international community.
Yours faithfully,
Clement J Rohee
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
