Dear Editor,
Trade Unionist Lincoln Lewis wrote “Parliament meeting to discuss Venezuela’s saber rattling must also discuss the idea floated by Bharrat Jagdeo to give Venezuela passage to the Atlantic, via Guyana’s territory that country is coveting”. This is Lewis’s xenophobic (understandably) interpretation of what Jagdeo said, what was being shared did not originate with Jagdeo but has been a bone of contention long before Jagdeo was born. The overlapping Economic Exclusive Zones of Guyana, Trinidad, and Barbados, effectively left Venezuela without a right to a sea lane to the Atlantic (see illustration). In 1990, Trinidad signed a treaty for the delimitation of marine and submarine areas, which some experts say has implications for Guyana and Barbados. There have been numerous meetings between Guyana and Venezuela under the Geneva Agreement, at these talks much had been made of Venezuela’s ‘landlocked’ status. When Jagdeo said ‘we’ in the context of border discussions, Jagdeo was referring to Guyana and to negotiations that occurred when he was in primary school; all of these discussions are part of the records held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as these talks were conducted by our diplomats. As President, in 2004, Jagdeo invoked the UNCLOS mechanism and took Suriname to the United Nations Tribunal of the Law of the Sea which led to our current maritime boundaries being settled in our favour at the Arbitral Tribunal at Hamburg in 2007.
My main issue with Lincoln Lewis is his timing and motivation, he is using the current tension along the border to take a jab at Jagdeo and, I would ask what would be the outcome if we all behave with such selfishness at a time of national crisis? Should I try to score points against Burnham for signing the Geneva Agreement? Was it not Burnham’s greed for power at any cost that made him sign us into this quagmire? Why would Burnham have acknowledged a border issue that was settled before he was born? And, I can point to the turning point in the relations between the two countries when David Granger called Venezuela “a monkey on our backs” that idiom was not well received by the nation that was our largest aid partner at the time (PetroCaribe).
When Granger decided on the ICJ route, he received full public support from the PPP/C and all right-thinking Guyanese, no one chose to play petty politics, Lincoln Lewis has cost thousands of Guyanese jobs with his bluff and bluster, Rusal, who Lewis said could not live without our ‘black gold’ variety of bauxite pulled out of the country because of Lewis, 800 jobs gone, Troy Resources, 375 jobs, Alcoa 3000+ jobs.
Now is not the time to try to score petty points and give even the slightest bit of joy to our country’s enemies. Failure to comprehend may one day force even the most liberal of us to rethink what can/should be allowed as free speech.
Sincerely,
Robin Singh
