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BIG WUCK AWAITING TWO PERSONS

Oct 27, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

One of the reasons why Guyana is still such a wonderful and relatively peaceful country to live in, is because of this special ability of the Guyanese people to make light of the many political tragedies that occur, thereby deflecting anger and resentment away from the political process and diffusing it through humour and light-heartedness.
A classic example of this was yesterday’s Dem Boy Seh. It was one of the funniest pieces for a long time and satirized about Guyana’s decision to open a diplomatic post in Kuwait.
The government of Guyana has signaled that it would be upgrading the embassy in Brazil and opening a diplomatic outpost in Kuwait, a country that is as far and removed from Guyana as Mars is from Earth.
Last year, Guyana began a one-man diplomatic initiative to the Middle East, no doubt eyeing the massive sums held in sovereign funds in those countries, and presuming that Guyana could attract significant investments from those countries.
This was a total misunderstanding of the interests of those countries. While most of those oil-producing countries favour friendly relations, and thus would not reject an offer to deepen ties with countries like Guyana, they also know that their strategic interests in these parts are not that important.
Guyana perhaps did not understand that, or those involved in this diplomatic shuttle did not consult widely enough to know that the opportunities from the Middle East would be limited.
To compound matters, Guyana seems to have mislaid its position as regards the Palestinian question, a subject that is close to the people in the Middle East. One top government official spoke about a two-state solution to the Palestinian question.
That has never been the traditional position of Guyana. Guyana has always respected Israel’s right to exist; that has never been an issue even during the period when there was a temporary break in relations. A two-state position sounds more like supporting the American road map to peace. Somebody needs to remind the local authorities that the peace process has already been detoured because of the expansion of settlements and because of tensions between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Guyana’s position has always been to support the self-determination of the Palestinian people and therefore when government officials speak about a two-state solution, they are deviating from this position because they are not making clear what the boundaries are of the states they are referring to. Are the boundaries the 1947 boundaries or are they the boundaries that existed as at 1967?
Guyana cannot hope to establish meaningful relations with any country in the Middle East when it displays a lack of surefootedness when it comes to the Palestinian question. Kuwait is not going to offer much to Guyana.
The government may be hoping to attract Kuwaiti investors into some of the major projects that are in the pipeline. That may be too optimistic, and no doubt because there may have been signals of waning interest, a decision has been taken to reignite this interest by establishing a presence in Kuwait.
But in this modern age, what can an under resourced embassy do to attract investments from that country. At least not more than can be done by advertising investment opportunities in a widely circulated periodical or newspaper.
Will the embassy in Kuwait be provided with the resources to host the sort of banquets that will be necessary to court Kuwaiti investors? Given the resources that have been provided to other diplomatic missions, it is doubtful that what is needed will ever be provided.  As such the post in Kuwait will end up as mere symbolism, to big dreams by a country too small to do anything better.
The announcement about the intended status of diplomatic missions in Brazil and Kuwait may signal something else. It may be a sign that there is going to some reshuffling or reassignments with political governance circles and therefore positions will have to be found for those who are about to fall from grace.

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