PERSONA NON GRATA

Dec 28, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The United States Ambassador to Guyana should enjoy his Christmas here in Guyana. From all accounts, it may be the last one that he spends here as a diplomat because it seems most likley that he will be recalled to Washington, unless he withdraws his statements that a USAID project that the government of Guyana is opposed will go ahead.
If in the face of the government’s withdrawal from the project, there was a statement from the embassy that the project will go ahead, this amounts to a direct defiance of the wishes of the government of Guyana.
This is reason enough for the Guyana Government to declare the responsible party as persona non grata.
The Guyana government has shown extreme tolerance in dealing with this issue. In some parts of Latin America, if any US Ambassador had dared to make such pronouncements, he or she would have been derecognized immediately and ordered out of the receiving State.
The Guyana government has however, not opted to go that route. It has instead dispatched a memorandum to the US State Department. In effect, it has filed a complaint and given the US government an opportunity to take corrective action. The US State Department is likely to take action and that action may well see the recall of the present US Ambassador to Guyana.
It need not have reached this point. The British would have handled the situation differently. They would have diplomatically explained that differences had arisen between the government of Guyana and themselves over the project that they were prepared to engage the government with a view towards narrowing these differences.
But not the Americans. They have a different conception of the world and how they should relate to developing countries located in the western hemisphere which under the Monroe Doctrine they considered as their backyard. Instead of using conciliatory and diplomatic language to mend differences, they have adopted an approach which has been interpreted as open defiance of the wishes of the receiving State.
No self-respecting sovereign country should tolerate such impunity. Can you imagine the US trying such tactics with the Morales government of Bolivia? Morales has already ordered USAID out of his country.
Do you believe that the US Ambassador to Venezuela would have dared to respond to the government of Venezuela in the way the US Ambassador to Guyana responded to the Guyana government? That would never have happened.
And can you imagine any US ambassador having the temerity to tell a Forbes Burnham that the US will be proceeding with a project which the government of Guyana is opposed to?
APNU and the AFC have in typical fashion defended the project. But they have failed to understand that the issue at contention is not so much the project itself, which can always be redeemed, but rather the temerity of the announcement that the project will proceed in spite of the wishes of the government of Guyana.
This flies in the face of Guyana’s sovereignty.
The United States is a sovereign nation. Guyana is also a sovereign nation. Relationships between countries involve agreements between States. The United States government cannot enter into an arrangement with parties within a sovereign nation without the consent of the government of the receiving nation. This is the basis upon which relationships between states are built and on which the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 is predicated.
USAID is not a non-governmental organization. When USAID undertakes any work, it does so as an agent of the United States government. As such, the consent of the Guyana government is required in keeping with customary international law.
Regardless of the merits of any project, so long as the government signals its objection, then that project has to be put on ice.
USAID cannot take any decision to move forward with any project which is opposed by the receiving State because its agreement is with the State and not with the subjects which will benefit from the project.
A few years ago, the British designed a security project for Guyana which the government had problems with. The British withdrew and sought diplomatic engagements to resolve the differences.
The issues are not yet fully resolved but this is the route of diplomacy; it takes time. The British did not decide they will go ahead.
The Americans erred when they arrogantly decided that they would go ahead with the USAID project. They have insulted Guyana’s sovereignty and its government by daring to indicate that the project will go ahead.
It is time to start over.

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