Guyanese President Irfaan Ali and Trinidadian Prime Minister Keith Rowley engaged each other at the Diplomatic Centre in Port of Spain on Thursday, August 18, 2022. Photo: Office of the President (Trinidad and Tobago).
By Wayne Kublalsingh – Nov 25, 2023
At a news conference on November 21, Dr Keith Rowley was asked by a journalist why Venezuela was at this time ramping up its claim to Essequibo. He replied that this journalist should know the answer to the question. And he looked forward to reading the journalist’s answer to his own question. Yet, the answer is complex and far from obvious. Any presumption of obviousness is not good. Unwise.
On October 25, Caricom issued a statement on the “border dispute”. It was “deeply disappointed and concerned at the decree and subsequent statements by Venezuela with respect to that country’s border controversy with Guyana”. It expressed “full support of the judicial process under way at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)”. It ended, “Caricom firmly repudiates any acts of aggression by Venezuela against Guyana.” This is a flat, unilateral statement, evincing no regard for the deeply complex realpolitik of the issue. It is either dumb, pretends to be dumb, or dumbly following learnt or accepted dicta.
Venezuela has clearly pronounced on the matter; and where there are instances too delicate to describe, it has thrown hints. Much of this position was articulated in its defence before the ICJ on November 15. First, it alleged that Guyana had used its seat at the OAS to join in actions “orchestrated against the sovereignty and the institutions of Venezuela, including the calls made by its Secretary General Luis Almagro for the use of military force and the calls aimed at denying the legitimacy of the president of the Republic”.
Second, “Guyana then participated in a group of states that was created exclusively to intervene and attack Venezuela within this infamous Lima Group. Guyana approved sixteen interventionist declarations against Venezuela.”
Third, “Guyana has put its institutions and its territory in the service of the major powers that have always aspired to destroy Venezuela in order to grab some of the largest world reserves of oil, gold and gas. The growing presence of the United States Southern Command and the frequent joint military exercises with the government of Guyana along with hostile declarations aimed at threatening Venezuela are public knowledge.”
Fourth, it claimed that it is only when the former CEO of Exxon Mobil Rex Tillerson, a key oil contractor in the Essequibo, was appointed by Donald Trump to the position of secretary of state “that United States supported for the first time Guyana’s position in the territorial dispute”. And that Trump’s next secretary of state, Mike Pompeo (former CIA director), had signed a strategic geopolitical and military pact with Guyana threatening Venezuela.
President of Guyana Tries to Provoke Venezuela, Raises Guyanese Flag in Disputed Essequibo Territory
In a speech, Maduro addressed Ali directly: “In your eagerness to please powerful transnational interests, you are turning Guyana into a branch of Exxon Mobil.”
Fifth, Guyana has prematurely granted concessions for oil mining in “delimited” maritime areas which were still in dispute, that had yet to be negotiated between Guyana and Venezuela.
Since the Bolivarian Republic was created by Hugo Chavez in 1999, Venezuela has been added to the US pantheon of Axis of Evil. Since 2021, 30 Venezuelan officials have been added to the US sanctions list, which includes travel bans and frozen assets. In 2002, the US backed the coup to temporarily overthrow Chavez. In 2019, it fomented rebellion in Venezuela, backing the non-elected Juan Guido to be its man in Caracas. Venezuela now accuses Guyana of abetting US efforts (including “lapdog” OAS and Lima groups) to destabilise it.
Venezuela’s two other points are deep-rooted and complex. In its ICJ defence, Venezuela stated that Nicolas Maduro “has never become an ally to powers that today are massacring the Palestinian people that have bombed Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan”.
A point which begs to be added is that Guyanese President Dr Irfaan Ali is Muslim. He has hedged this credential in Middle East visits and negotiations with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, even before the present conflagration. He has since been lobbying these new allies for support. Revealingly, Ali solicited the US allies in the Middle East: the blue-eyed wealthy elite amongst Arabs.
Finally, the ICJ defence castigated “the legacy left by the British Empire that exploited the territory from its legitimate owners and gave it to those who never had any right over said territory”. This statement is laden with innuendo and grievance. The Bolivarian Revolution is criollo, native, mestizo. Not white, Western, European. Newbie immigrants arrived in the New World to filch the assets bequeathed to them by British and European plunder. Their self-serving mercantile classes sell out the assets of the indigens, sideline them in the Essequibo.
Has Guyana forgotten how Venezuela accepted rice for its oil, or the contribution of Venezuela’s Petrocaribe to Guyana’s GDP? In contrast, what impact has Exxon Mobil had on Guyana’s human development indices?
Maduro wants assurances. He wants to talk directly to Ali. He wants to settle these matters bilaterally, neighbour to neighbour. The Bolivarian Republic is regarded as an outlier oil kingdom. He knows he will not get a fair shake with Western-backed tribunals and courts.
But Ali, tellingly, does not want to meet. Not good. Guyana’s justifiable dismay and indignation are as acute as Venezuela’s. If Caricom is to become a credible arbiter in this matter, it must acknowledge its complex ethnic and economic realpolitik; not succumb to the Zelenskyy effect, like NATO and the West did, in generalising and downplaying Russia’s security anxieties.
