OPINION: Guyana and Suriname on the right side of history

Last Updated on Sunday, 25 August 2024, 12:10 by Writer

By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus

We all love truth, but they are different kinds of truths. The truth most universally loved is moral and transcendental. We can call this truth in itself; it is spaceless and timeless. Then there is truth that is based on rationality. In this case, truth is based on cost-benefit analysis, on a logic of maximizing gains and minimizing losses in specific situations. In contradistinction to universal truths, situational truth is based on self-interest.

Democracy carries with it the right to free speech, individual rights, the right to own private property, and the right of equality before the law. But democracy is more than about political, legal, social, and economic rights. The totality of these rights amounts to existential freedom. In a philosophical sense, democracy is unfathomably moral. For that reason, democracy must always be deepened, defended, and allowed to soar across all those lands like Venezuela, where the people are held in bondage, and where freedom totters on the brink of extinction.

We must be proud of Guyana. And Suriname too. For these are the only two CARICOM nations that now stand with the United States in its joint statement which called for democracy in Venezuela. The 13 others are ‘missing in action.’ Some are not only ‘missing in action,’ but have actively endorsed what transpired in Venezuela less than a month ago. Even worse, is the fact that the declaration of support for Maduro, is simultaneously a breach of trust within the Caribbean family. We need not demonize the 13, however, because there is an explanation.

Situational truths very often get the better of universal truths. For the 13 Caribbean nations that have basically absolved Maduro, it is their national interests that are primary. For them, the primacy of advancing what is in the best interest of their peoples, and their respective sovereignties, is sufficiently compelling to do what they have done. Perfectly rational, no doubt. Yet, by doing so, we must also acknowledge that they sacrificed the universal for the situational, purely on the basis self-interest, rational self-interest.

These same Caribbean nations are valuable to the national interest of Guyana, especially when this is defined in terms of defending and deepening democracy here. CARICOM stood in defence of free and fair elections in Guyana in 2020. Without that support, this country could have easily re-entered the era of party paramountcy, and the concomitant declivities associated with those decades of desecration and disenchantment.

Guyana and Suriname are also acting in their national interest. What is different from the other CARICOM (13) states is that in standing with the United States against electoral fraud in Venezuela, they are standing on the right side of history, on the side of existential freedom, on the side of universal truth.

Dr. Randy Persaud is an Adviser in the Office of the President.