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Beware of Greeks…

Sep 08, 2010 Editorial

On the face of it, there is much to be said for increasing linkages with Suriname, our neighbour to the east, as has been articulated in the Joint Communiqué released by presidents Jagdeo and Bouterse after the latter’s one-day visit to Guyana. We are both members of Caricom, which is first and foremost dedicated to our economic integration, via the mechanisms of a single market and a single economy. For hundreds of years, even though we have been situated side by side, our relations had to be mediated through our European “mother countries”, which were thousands of miles away. That doesn’t make sense.
But none of this is new. In fact very early in his regime, then PM Burnham visited Suriname and forcefully announced this perspective. Sadly, however, within a year Suriname reciprocated by resuscitating their claim to the New River Triangle that had been settled in the 1930’s. It was certainly no coincidence that the Venezuelan border claim on our western border had been asserted at the same time – when Guyana was about to become independent. Suriname was to aggressively broaden its hostility against the Guyanese state by laying claim to the entirety of the Corentyne River.
Since that time, Suriname has single-mindedly pursued her claim to what she defines as parts of her national territory – even when Guyana has bent over backward to cultivate good-neighbourly relations. After years of seizing boats and harassing Guyanese fishermen off the shore of the Corentyne – even to the point of landing on Guyanese soil – through a ridiculously broad interpretation of her claims to the mouth of the Corentyne, her gunboats actually chased off the CGX oil-rig from our waters in 2000.
We have to review such actions against Suriname’s refusal to utilise the National Border Commission that had been set up in 1989 under Hoyte to deal with such contingencies. We have to review such actions against the fact that in 1994, Dr Cheddi Jagan visited Suriname and received much of the same promises of cooperation on the widest number of areas. He facilitated Suriname’s entry into Caricom  the following year. Yet when the Surinamese president visited Guyana that year, he took pains to point out that the border claim was top on the agenda of his country. In 2008, right after the World Court ruled in our favour on the delimitation of the border in the mouth of the Corentyne, Suriname seized the Guyanese vessel Lady Chandra in the Corentyne.
Against the promise of Bouterse to build a bridge across the Corentyne, we have to remember the insistence of Suriname that before the Canawaima ferry, funded by the EU, could become operational, Guyana should agree that all the symbols should indicate that it was under the jurisdiction of Suriname.
That is, the launching was delayed for two years until Guyana agreed that the ferry’s flag should be the flag of Suriname; it would be controlled by Suriname and crimes committed aboard the vessel should be tried in the courts of Suriname. Suriname was flaunting its sovereignty over the Corentyne River.
The question that must be asked amidst all the bonhomie between the leaders of the two countries is: “Who will have sovereignty over the bridge?” The other question that has to be asked is whether it is to our benefit that the old initiatives that are being revived under the aegis of the two Offices of the Presidents rather than in the previous Commissions?
We had never created a Border Commission, as had the Surinamese, on a permanent basis, staffed with the requisite experts etc.
It should have been to the surprise of none that we were always caught with our pants down when the Surinamese decided to take the offensive. Bouterse has such a Commission at his disposal: who will advise our President in the new dispensation, which we would be rather naïve to expect will unfold in any way differently than in the past?
It was only earlier this year, after all, that our Minister of Foreign Affairs had to complain in our Parliament that Suriname was refusing to renounce the use of force to deal with its claims against Guyana. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

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