ICJ is Guyana’s last chance to keep our borders sacrosanct … We cannot spare any expense

Feb 18, 2018 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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With unholy glee, the minority People’s Progressive Party (PPP) announced that it has filed a lawsuit demanding that the US$18 million signing bonus Guyana received from ExxonMobil be deposited into the national Consolidated Fund.
The suit is mostly directed at Finance Minister, Winston Jordan and the Cabinet, and bears some similarity to one filed by the local chapter of Transparency International.
While Guyana’s laws generally compel authorities to put state revenues into the Consolidated Fund, Minister Jordan and his colleagues were at pains to explain that the money was deliberately set aside to fund the cadre of highly accomplished Attorneys-at-law and Researchers who will be hired to work on the lifeline of Guyana, the crucial Guyana-Venezuela border case at International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Netherlands.
This suit is obviously another gambit by the PPP to disrupt the APNU+AFC’s programmes that bring betterment to the nation’s peoples.  Take note of the fact that it was only in January that the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, announced his decision to send the case to the ICJ for a once and for all settlement, instead of depending on the Good Offices process that had been dragging on for 51 years with no end in sight.
The PPP’s challenge, as usual, is about money and control of it.  It also comes in the wake of a rather startling confession by Opposition Leader (and former President) Bharrat Jagdeo.  He had the gumption to tell the nation that while he sat at the helm of this nation, he had given serious consideration to satisfying (appeasing really) Venezuela’s bullyism by giving to this aggressive, greedy neighbour a portion of our maritime space.
Guyana was truly blessed when Guyanese, sufficiently disgusted by Jagdeo and his rag tag band of politicos, voted that party out in 2015. We could no longer trust them to safeguard this nation, not our security, not our economy, and definitely not our ability to benefit from our God-given wealth resources.
We got tired of our own moaning and groaning about the PPP government’s inability to tap these resources, and now they give us good reason to believe that they were going to cave under Venezuelan pressure and put all of the Essequibo in serious jeopardy.
Jagdeo continues to smile and extol his patriotic virtues every time he holds a press conference, but how blind could he be to fail to see the people’s disgust?  Is he even aware that no other Head of State in Guyana’s history has ever considered, much less confessed to planning a giveaway of Guyana’s patrimony, our national sovereignty?
Let’s never forget that the decision to approach the ICJ is meant to put an end to Venezuela’s bullying and intimidation.  It is to bring to a full stop their deliberate attempts to prevent Guyana from achieving any kind of economic upliftment.  One wonders what their real motives were.  Was it their intention, like Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, to brazenly steal what the little neighbour has and control their resources?  Guyana cannot be a threat to Venezuela in any way.  Our nation, like Kuwait, is 100 times smaller, and Venezuela still has possession of the single largest untapped supply of petroleum in the world.
Most Guyanese consider the international boundary settlement of 1899 as perfect, full and final.  To a man, we wait with all 10 fingers and all 10 toes crossed in hope that the ICJ shares our fervency, and that, in their final and binding ruling, we will retain every blade of grass, every drop of water in the Essequibo, every curass and catfish, every barrel of oil, every ounce of gold, every ton of manganese and every single diamond.
It is within this context that we view the PPP’s recent move to the courts as downright treacherous. Their credibility is gone, so they should quit trying to assure anyone that their motives are patriotic.  The outcome of this boundary dispute determines our very being and it must be non-partisan.
Minister Jordan has explained ad nauseum that the signing bonus from ExxonMobil was deposited since mid-2016 in a special interest-bearing account at the Bank of Guyana, and that it is earmarked to fund Guyana’s representation at the ICJ in the border dispute case.
If it is placed in the Fund, the US$18 million would have to be converted from American to Guyanese currency at one rate, then re-purchased at a much higher rate when the need for it arises.  There is a fairly large difference in the rates at which hard currencies are bought and sold.
And, for as long as the money remains in the special BOG account, it is accruing interest in hard currency that would give us even more funds to hire the brightest and most experienced attorneys and researchers from around the world. We won’t have a second chance, since the ruling will be binding on all parties.
The clear conclusion on the PPP’s move to the courts is that they are looking to score cheap political points.  Jagdeo speaks nationalism then does things that are patently unpatriotic.  So, we’ll see him on the western benches of the Chambers after 2020.  Guyanese have had enough of him.

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