Former President Donald Ramotar doesn’t believe that Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro would change his spurious claims to Essequibo, even after talks with President Irfaan Ali, given that Guyana had exhausted talks with Venezuela on the 1899 arbitral border award since its independence.
“It is always good to talk, but on this issue there is nothing more to say. We have been talking since 1966 and it is why we went to the court [International Court of Justice (ICJ)] and should allow that process to conclude,” Ramotar, Guyana’s last president to speak with Maduro when he had visited here in 2013, told the Stabroek News when contacted.
President Ali has agreed to a meeting with Maduro on Thursday in St Vincent and the Grenadines, following mounting concern at Venezuela’s aggressive stance, but he has made it clear that this country’s land boundary is not up for bilateral discussion.
This newspaper spoke with the former president about the current developments in Caracas and its defiance of ICJ orders. Ramotar said that Maduro was calculative in trying to mislead the world on a controversy he created.
“They are falling for a clever ploy by President Maduro to deliberately mislead them and to garner some support …to do so, Maduro is trying to create the impression that this issue has to do with the presence of the oil giant Exxon Mobil in Guyana. This is, however, very far from the truth, because the issue with Venezuela began long before any oil production in Guyana,” Ramotar noted.
Positing on the historical content, he related that Venezuela, backed by the United States, had begun to “make some noise about the border” in the mid-19th century but decided to settle with the United Kingdom in 1899.
“This was when the US was moving to [remove] the European colonial power from the Americas. This policy was expressed in the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed by President James Monroe during an address to Congress on December 2, 1823, exactly 200 years ago. The US resorted to force in expelling the Spanish from Cuba, Puerto Rico etc. Their relations with Britain became very strained … in relation to British Guiana’s western border, which at that time was at the Orinoco River. The UK and US/Venezuela decided to settle the issue by way of arbitration in the late 1890s. An award was made in 1899,” Ramotar related.
“When that award was made Venezuela celebrated it as a great victory. They had good reasons to celebrate because they got most of the territory and the area where they had the strongest demand, that is the whole of the Orinoco River and basin. They were very satisfied with this, and they regarded the border as fixed forever. They never raised any issue for more than 60 years,” he added.
However, in 1962, at the time when Guyana was expected to become independent, Ramotar said, Venezuela raised a claim to the Essequibo region, a land mass that makes up ⅔ of Guyana’s territory.
Just before Independence in 1966, the British – the then government of British Guiana – and Venezuela, decided to sign an agreement in Geneva to handle the matter and not to stop the British from granting independence to Guyana. The agreement was that Guyana and Venezuela would resolve the matter diplomatically. If they could not, then they would take the issue to the United Nations Secretary General to choose a measure or measures to bring the controversy to an end, he noted.
“The first attempt began in 1966. A mixed commission was established to work on the matter. That lasted until 1970 without any result. That led to the Port of Spain Protocol which put the matter in deep freeze for 12 years. From 1982 discussions between the two parties continued; sometimes it involved the UN Secretary General. This lasted until 1989 when, with the assistance of the Secretary General, the Good Officer process began. That lasted well into this century. However, no resolution occurred,” he said.
“In the meantime, political parties in Venezuela began to use this issue as a mobilising tool to garner support of the Venezuelan masses at election time. It was used so much and with great effect, by the right wing parties in particular. This lasted until President [Hugo] Chavez came to power in Venezuela on February 2, 1999,” he added.
Ramotar said Chavez believed in the Venezuelan claim. “However, as president he seemed to have studied the issue in detail and came to the conclusion that it was a manipulation. On more than one occasion President Chavez expressed the view that the issue was instigated from outside and was not a real problem,” he asserted.
Further, he added, “That was the position of his party when he was in control. It is logical to conclude that Maduro, who was one of his closest comrades, must have been of the same view.”
He said that it should be examined why Maduro changed his mind.
“The answer cannot be oil because Venezuela has the largest reserve in the world. The real reason cannot be ExxonMobil because Guyana awarded a prospecting licence to Exxon before Chavez came to power. It was never an issue with Chavez. We had also approached the UN Secretary General, in 2014 well before the discovery of oil, so oil cannot be the issue,” he reasoned.
“Indeed, Chavez had a broader vision for Latin America and the Caribbean. He was a firm advocate of integration and for keeping foreign forces out of the region; that Latin America and the Caribbean must be a zone of peace. Maduro’s behaviour is defeating, indeed burying the vision of the late great President Chavez. His actions are clearly desperate moves. His party has lost a lot of support in Venezuela and the probability of him winning is less than 50%. The referendum which he hoped to have helped him mobilise people was a flop,” he said.
Maduro’s desperation, Ramotar believes, is pushing that president on an irrational path, far away from what Chavez wanted.
“He should be aware that no country in the Americas wants to have instability and therefore would do anything to prevent it. Unlike Chavez, Maduro is opening the door for external intervention in the region. Moreover, instead of integrating the region as Chavez and Lula wanted, he is objectively dividing the continent by his opportunistic claim on our border. This is a very far cry from Chavez’s vision! Indeed, it is a downright betrayal of the great man’s aspirations for our region,” he expressed.
He said that the issue today should also be analysed in terms of left and right politics since Maduro’s current stance “is misleading at best” on either side.
