This country would have been naïve to believe that the December 18th ruling of the International Court of Justice last year would not produce a bellicose response from Venezuela. And inevitably it did. That response came on Thursday after President Nicolás Maduro met with his Defence Council along with the Council of State.
According to venezuelanalysis the Venezuelan government repeated its rejection of the ICJ decision and reaffirmed its rejection of the 1899 Arbitral Award settling the boundary between the two countries. It also maintained its adherence to the Geneva Agreement of 1966 which it said stipulated that the border must be settled by direct negotiations between the two countries. It seems almost superfluous to restate yet again that the Geneva Agreement says no such thing. But then where this issue is concerned, those who rule in Venezuela have been consumers of fake news for many decades.
According to the agency, the meeting was televised, and for the benefit of his TV audience especially one supposes, President Maduro said, “This is a cause uniting an entire nation to fight against the dispossession of a territory that always belonged to Venezuela.” He also indicated his administration’s intention to send a letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres. Not surprisingly either, he was reported as saying that another letter would be dispatched to the President of the ICJ arguing that that body had no jurisdiction to rule on a unilateral Guyanese suit, and denouncing “suspicious” endeavours to rush the hearings.
So far, there is nothing particularly unexpected here, but what several agencies reported him as saying next should cause Guyanese antennae to tune in. He told his nation that he had signed a presidential decree laying down Venezuela’s maritime and territorial boundaries in order to protect what he described as national jurisdiction rights. “I signed a decree on the creation of the Venezuelan Atlantic facade territory. It is approved, please proceed with implementation. For Venezuela and Essequibo!” he was quoted as saying. He was also reported as going on to tell viewers that this was “part of the battery of actions legal, diplomatic, political and State” to defend the “sacred rights of 200 years of the Republic.”
This is not the first time, it should be said, that President Maduro has purported to annexe Guyana’s waters off Essequibo. In May 2015 he issued Decree No 1,787 which ‘appropriated’ our territorial sea and continental shelf between Punta Playa and the Essequibo River. The decree was amended later because the first version had encompassed the maritime space of other states as well, but in terms of what went into Venezuela’s Official Gazette, it made little difference to us. The same decree mandated the Venezuelan navy to secure the maritime area.
So what, one might ask, is the difference this time around. While that earlier claim made specific reference to the maritime zone, from what has been reported so far on this occasion it might appear to include land space as well. With US Coast Guard cutters zooming up and down the coast here, and the presumed intolerance Washington will have for any Venezuelan recklessness which has ExxonMobil or any multinational for that matter as its target, is Caracas shifting to specifically include territory as well in its spurious decrees?
This is not to suggest that ExxonMobil’s activities are not its greatest current irritant. In 2015 President Maduro in a television interview griped that ExxonMobil “was the mastermind behind the border dispute [sic] between Guyana and Venezuela.” Leaving the absurdity of that remark aside, it might be noted that Telesur reported the Venezuelan head of state as commenting on Thursday that it was transnational oil companies which lay behind the ICJ’s decision, with a view to taking over the Atlantic coast in order to steal the oil that belonged to Venezuela.
It is not even as if this latest expression of national lunacy is confined to Miraflores. The newly installed National Assembly earlier on the same day as Maduro spoke, unanimously approved a nine-point motion rejecting the ICJ ruling and supposedly defending the Geneva Agreement. The Assembly gave its endorsement to the government’s diplomatic work, and formed a commission directed to the Essequibo claim. It was reported it would be headed by a lawyer, Hermann Escarra.
As it is now constituted the National Assembly, of course, is a government organ, but it must not be forgotten that the self-described interim President of Venezuela, Mr Juan Guaidó, and the rump of his Assembly do not differ in terms of their views on the boundary. He too has rejected the decision by the ICJ: “This decision ignores the 1966 Geneva Agreement, the only legal, political and diplomatic instrument that recognizes the existence of the controversy and promotes a practical and satisfactory solution for the parties,” Europa Press quoted him as saying.
Where he differs from Miraflores is in blaming the late Hugo Chávez as well as the current presidential incumbent for the current situation. “[D]ue to their negligent and irresponsible conduct, [they] put ideological-partisan interests above national interests, putting integrity at risk, territor[y] and the loss of sovereignty of the nation.” Rather more sinisterly, he is reported as appealing not just to Venezuelans, but to the armed forces to guarantee the ‘sovereignty’ of Essequibo.
As yet, we have not seen the articles in this latest decree, although it has been reported that President Maduro announced that Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza would give an account of the constitutional and legal scope of the ‘territory’.
This is nothing short of outrageous. It is about time that Guyana got its act together and committed to a major programme backed by all political parties and groups in this country to counter the pernicious and ignorant propaganda that has been promoted by Caracas for decades. Why in this day and age does nearly every responsible news agency still refer to a ‘dispute’ between Guyana and Venezuela which goes back to the 19th century? Why do we still have to read in international sources that Venezuela has always rejected the 1899 Award, and that Britain (or sometimes the British Empire) took land from Venezuela in 1899? Why have we never put resources into countering this kind of codswallop?
We need a multi-level response. From the scholastic point of view we have enough academics outside this country, even if not within it, to start writing for serious foreign policy, legal, historical, political and, most importantly, Latin American journals to get our legitimate views out there at the highest level. Governments pay attention to think tanks and experts. There are also the less specialised avenues in terms of the news agencies, and the need to write them every time they misreport the background to the situation, and letters to foreign newspapers in general whenever Venezuela makes a move. Writers should also try to have pieces published in overseas papers, perhaps beginning with the Caribbean press.
Since like Donald Trump, Mr Maduro has a penchant for Twitter, we should not forget social media, and should move as well to setting up websites outlining our case for popular consumption. We need a commission – or at least a group − to organise all this.
Most of all, we have to ensure that our own population is fully grasped of what is at stake. Where that is concerned our two political warhorses and other knowledgeable groups need to come together to create a framework for educating the population – including schoolchildren. Is the issue on the Grade Six Assessment syllabus yet, for example? It may be that the propaganda effort could see each of the major political parties dealing with its own core constituency, but even if contemplated that should surely not be the only approach. Naturally, there should be programmes on radio and television and in the newspapers, while pamphlets which have already been written should be circulated again. And perhaps there could be those detailed to go to workplaces to explain what is at stake. Most of all, the government needs to allocate resources to such a large-scale exercise, an allocation which surely the opposition will support. Above all else, we cannot allow the Venezuelans to get away with the impression that we are indifferent to the preservation of our territorial integrity. It is time for the entire political class to now rouse itself from its customary lethargy.
President Maduro was quoted as tweeting: “The Sun of Venezuela is Born in the Essequibo!” It isn’t.
