OPINION: Venezuelan election: int’l chessboard active, Guyana must be sensible

Last Updated on Sunday, 4 August 2024, 15:18 by Writer

by GHK Lall

The battlelines are drawn, and they have all that is ominous about them. Russia, China, and Persia (Iran) came out of the blocks first. The Venezuelan election was transparent, the man won another term of office. Fair and square. Free and fair and transparent. Normally, it would be the end of the matter, except that the US issued a terse note of being “concerned” about the outcome of that same election. In diplomatic speak that is on the chilled side. Then, the Americans followed up in short order with a swing: the Venezuelan opposition won. Now it must be gravely concerning for the US that this is being denied, which concern is shared by the UK, EU, and the G-7, I am sure. With these developments in mind, the wish is that Venezuela didn’t have a leader like Maduro; in fact, that Venezuela was much farther away. Trouble is brewing, deep trouble.

In all this, Guyana is mired in its own troubles. This is not the time for that nonaligned setup that once made so much sense, but now amounts to a nonfactor in the big picture. Fuhgeddaboudit! The Chinese are here, and they are over there in Venezuela with an especially large financial footprint. The Russians are here, but with a much bigger stake in Venezuela. Now, its own version and flotilla of gunboat diplomacy heave into sight. The Iranians are smarting from repeated US-backed blows in its own backyard and are itching for a chance to get even. Persians have a history of being revenge-minded, driven. Guyana may not be in the middle of this developing squall, but it is still too close. I note that Vice President Jagdeo is reportedly in the US. It may not have any official origins but a better understanding of where Guyana is, and what is expected of it, he should make his priorities. Anyway he can appraise himself of the lay of the land and how his People’s Progressive Party (not to forget Guyana) features would be in his best interests to know. In other words, what the Americans expect, demand, of Guyana. Plus, I believe he will be the beneficiary of a glimpse of what hangs over his own head, as in what is known about him. A glimpse only, I must emphasize. Play along or move along. Gracefully and quietly. Or the hard way. Venezuela just had their 2025 in July 2024, and it has now started. Guyana is now getting started with 2025.

Elections hijinks aside – present and future, domestic and in the neighborhood – I have my own concerns. They are not big power ones, only the anxieties of small people. Just ask Guyanese living in Essequibo (with a capital ‘O’). All these foreign elephants interested in Venezuela, heading to Venezuela, and soon tramping around Venezuela is enough to prompt personal interest in heading in the other direction. This is not my fight, with neither dog nor bone. The hotbed in the volatile Middle East could pale beside the real one shaping up around here. Too many Big Powers. Too many big ideas and bigger ambitions. Too many bad actors and their foreign adventures. I am pained to recall the quagmire that was Vietnam. Looks like the same participants to me and arrayed against one another in the same formations. A round boo to those in the local political food chain who pooh-poohed the once old, but now new, Cold War. It looks anything but cold with more heating up through each new set of phrases and postures. I dragged Vietnam into the mix because I remember how Laos and Cambodia were put to good use by the warring sides. Warring is a dirty word in these politically tranquil times. It cannot be helped. The mere contemplation of Guyana becoming the Cambodia of late 1960s and early 1970s history is enough to give the heebie-jeebies (in Guyanese that is called shivering). This area is going to be a flashpoint. It’s unavoidable.

The crisis for Guyana is that it is caught between several lovers, three of them. China is one. The USA is another. And Maduro of Venezuela is the third. Which poison to pick? that is the question. On the internal front, the old poisons are stronger, sharper, deadlier. When politics is mixed with oil, this is the usual result. Talking about oil, Venezuela has 300 big ones of that stuff. Now, there is no self-respecting superpower, eastern or western, that could afford neutrality or insensitivity or apathy with that kind of reservoir. Chosin Reservoir, it is not, but that could change pronto. Of course, the Yanks are looking to retain some level of hegemony in their landmass, hometown sphere of influence. Maduro, meanwhile, is busy angling for a heart-to-heart with the big boys here to get some land and give up some oil. If he could barter for a waterway, then all the better, what I call making hay. All is fair in love and war, it is said. I think that all those foreign voices having their say in Venezuela’s election have more than transparency and democracy and the people on their minds. One billion is a big deal; 300 billion is worth some saber-rattling. We have our own ones now stirring in anticipation.