OPINION: Guyana-Venezuela developments: two concerns

Last Updated on Tuesday, 28 November 2023, 8:48 by Denis Chabrol

by GHK Lall

The President and Vice President are talking a good game about where Guyana stands against Venezuela’s ambitions.  To their efforts, I lend a shoulder of support.  Care has been taken to support the national cause, even when there are disagreements with approaches and actions, even attitudes.  But those misgivings are withheld in deference to the national interest.  Still, there are two concerns that I must articulate in the public space, regardless of the reception they receive.  They are concerns of mine, and comments (not criticisms) of the flurry of activities underway in different parts of the local sphere.

It would be a progressive step to see the Opposition engaged and included in some of national conditioning against the Venezuelan threat.  I think that it would lend coherence and credence to Vice President’s Jagdeo statement in Essequibo that we stand as a united people against Venezuelan ambitions and visions.  The Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Aubrey Norton, has neither quibbled nor hesitated about his group’s commitment against Venezuela’s war of words, saber-rattling, aggressive movements, and its brazen overtures to residents of Essequibo.  Thus, I think that President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo must work diligently to find ways to include the entire Opposition on their public platforms across Guyana.  It would be the best manifestation of a truly united public stance against the powerful existential menace that hovers from our neighbors to the West.  The national house must not only be said to be ‘united in resolve’, but it must also give every impression of being so in the flesh and to the bone.  To do otherwise is shortchanging the situation, as I have observed.  To put the lightest touch on this, international support, or otherwise, the PPP alone cannot successfully stand against the relative strengths of Venezuela.  It would be a cardinal miscalculation on this side of the border.

Why waste an available asset?  Why allow [or give the appearance of] politics intruding and calling into question the ‘oneness’ of a concentrated and comprehensive front against Venezuela?  Why even give the appearance of such a calculation and condition at this the worst of times?  Why weaken what could be the first sod turned that leads to what has eluded this country from its very first days of existence?  It is the height of unwisdom to be casual or indifferent or negligent about the possibilities.  Our voces must not only be united against long premeditated, impassioned Venezuelan impulses, but so must the hearts and souls of 750,000 or 800,000 Guyanese.  All must be totally committed and devoted to doing what is best in a wall of objection and resistance to Venezuela’s insulting postures, and degrading words to match.  We must more than match, we must surpass in spirit and conviction, whatever Venezuela conjures to bolster its baseless claims.  Guyanese need to see and hear the Opposition in the mix, and at the side of the President and Vice President, as invited by them.  To interpret any of this as criticism would be missing the mark by a mile.  It is what we need now, well-intended advice that could last, if listened to and followed in some shape or strain.

My second concern is that there is this passionate emphasis on international friends and their readiness to lend a powerful presence to Guyana at this time, as hinted to by both President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo.  I agree with the engagements, laud the expectations.  Let’s see how the proof of the loyalties and priorities of international friends unfold, especially those of my foster parents, the United States.  The Vice President is on record about no interest in a miliary base.  I hear him, and all I will way is beware of what could be viewed as half measures in the eyes of wooed international partners.  From all indications, the government’s leadership has worked assiduously to cultivate a hearing, some favorable reception, and probably some levels of what is needed, meaning support.  Now for a reality check, a couple of them.  Guyana is on the ropes, and beggars can’t be choosers.  To put bluntly, there is no free lunch, which is how the scales of Guyana’s dire needs versus foreign interests are weighed.  If not today, something is going to have to give later, especially when consideration is given to longer term and broader U.S. visions-economic, military, geopolitical, geostrategic, and others-in this hemisphere.  To repeat, the quid pro quo will evolve somewhere, and it involves more than the commercial, and the gratitude of Guyana.  An alliance, a treaty, and whatever either of those mean on the ground, other than a piece of paper, could all be part of the works, may be well advanced.

As a practical matter, the Venezuelan menace will crescendo and then cool, from time to time.  Though Guyana stands to grow stronger in some areas, any further measurements of local versus Venezuelan strengths must be banished from consideration.  Some gaps-people and hardware-will remain as they are.  The sum and substance of these realities is that Guyana needs friends, needs help, needs bulwarks on its side.  Those don’t operate solely on sentiment and goodwill, or on thin air.  The problem from my perspective is that this clear and called for reliance on international presences on our behalf (read American) all but renders Guyana as a vassal state, but one hell of an endowed one, if it can remain intact, as a vibrant national entity, with the configurations of today.