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President Ramotar: Please justify your nation’s UN Vote on Syria

Aug 27, 2012 Letters

Dear Editor,
In Politics and International Relations, not all decision-making falls easily into Black or White areas (Right or Wrong), so the analysts and pundits create another area – the grey area.  Sometimes governments choose to make decisions that they think are prudent and practical and that will benefit their people in the short run at least, if not in the long run.
To hell with the morality or immorality of the decision, they argue, so long as their country can benefit by this particular vote. So what does Guyana hope to benefit by choosing to vote with the hard-core block (Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran)? More loans and grants from China and Russia, free or subsidized oil from Venezuela, more doctors trained in Cuba?
I worry more that Guyana’s vote (I deem the affirmative or abstention vote to be the same in effect or impact) is rooted in an ideology, namely, that all of Guyana’s political values, democratic values, free speech, free assembly etc are becoming more or less the same and merging with those of Russia’s and China’s and Venezuela’s, Iran’s and Cuba’s.
In the Syria Case, however there is no room for grey area; everything is either black or white. Assad believes his family has a divine right to rule.
The Syrian people, inspired and emboldened by events of the Arab Spring decided to rise up. Assad will have none of it – he has firmly decided to declare war on his own people – and deployed tanks, gunships and heavy artillery to literally mow down his people by the thousands. Already 25,000 have been slaughtered, one million have fled across the borders.
President Ramotar surrounded by his advisors (including the architect of this policy -prochancellor Prem Misir) decided the Syrian people have no right to rise up, or decided they found a good excuse:  Ah! America and European nations are helping the people with arms. So both sides are armed, therefore both sides are to be blamed. Both sides committed atrocities. Thus reasoned, president Ramotar’s ideological hatred for America and Europe led him naturally to vote with the other camp.
President Ramotar’s UN vote has turned the reality of the Syrian uprising on its head. Which occurred first? Did Assad declare war on his people first, and only after Western group of nations fail to get Russia’s and China’s support for mediation and Assad’s departure – only then, they began providing support for the people’s resistance to sort of level the playing field? Ramotar’s decision on this matter has been drained of all morality and truth-telling and sound judgment.
Half-a-million Guyanese people live in the United States. You would think Guyana as a democratic nation would naturally belong with the democratic camp. Not so. Ramotar is driven more by ideology. And, the fact that Guyana appears to be a democracy might be all a mirage.
Ramotar’s vote at the UN (not Guyana’s, but Ramotar’s) is an affront to all decent, democratic-minded Guyanese people both at home and abroad. The way president Ramotar voted is not totally unexpected – he feels obligated to follow Jagdeo’s line. (Recall Jagdeo travelled half-way around the world to Tehran – to do what? – to make common cause with Iran’s leaders who had just stolen an election – and were slaughtering the Iranian people who were on the streets daily protesting the stolen elections. Does Jagdeo really believe in the right to protest stolen elections?)
President Ramotar’s vote at the UN on the Syrian resolution is tantamount to an assault on the sensibilities of freedom-loving Guyanese people. It is at once a betrayal of the values of the Guyanese people.
Guyana’s crop of current leaders have no shame. Guyana’s leaders benefitted from our long struggle for free and fair elections (thanks to Western Nations who supported that struggle); yet when the people of Syria rose up to fight and die for democracy, Guyana’s leaders chose firmly to side with dictator and divine ruler Assad. If this is not an eye-pass of the Guyanese people, I don’t know what else is.
Mike Persaud

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