The President made a diplomatic blooper

Jul 19, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – President Irfaan Ali made a diplomatic blunder when he offered to establish a Saudi Arabian desk in the Ministry of Finance. The Saudis would consider that a diplomatic insult.

The President is also keen on having the Saudi’s establish an embassy in Guyana. These two proposals – the one for the desk and the other for an embassy –shows the political inexperience of the President when it comes to international relations.

That is surprising given the ministerial exposure which the now President had. He became one of the youngest ever PPP members of the National Assembly in 2006, 16 years ago, and was appointed as a Minister in 2009. He had six years as a Minister, enough time to become familiar with diplomatic protocols.

Had he been more familiar with the workings of diplomacy, he would not have made such a gaffe. Had he consulted with his Foreign Minister or the Foreign Service staff, he would not have made such an unintended but embarrassing mistake.

The Saudis are not coming here to sit at any desk in the Ministry of Finance. That desk would have to be in an office and given the standards of the Saudi’s, there is no office in the Ministry of Finance which can meet the standards which the Saudis would expect. The Saudi “desk” would have to be 10 times better than the office of the Minister in that Ministry.

Saudi Arabia is one of the richest countries in the world. It has the second highest oil reserves in the world. It is among the top 20 richest countries in terms of per capita GDP. It is rolling in money. Why then would the President believe that the Saudi’s are going to come and establish a desk in a crammed wooden building?

The more fundamental objection, however, is that a foreign state cannot establish a desk in a Ministry of another state.  That would be unthinkable.

Nor are the Saudi’s likely to establish a diplomatic mission in Guyana. Saudi Arabia has embassies in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and Cuba. It has none in the English-speaking Caribbean. Had President Ali been more astute, he would have urged the establishment of a Saudi embassy to serve the English-speaking Caribbean and for it to be based in Guyana.

But there is no guarantee that the Saudis would opt, first, for a diplomatic presence in the Caribbean, much less to base it in Guyana in preference to Barbados or Trinidad. Guyana is not part of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and does not appear to have any plans to do so.

The Saudi’s have little interest in the Caribbean and Jagdeo found out during his Middle Eastern forays. The Saudis have gotten what they wanted from the Caribbean. They have gotten the Regions’ support to host EXPO 2030 in Riyadh.

Jagdeo once made an unsuccessful Middle Eastern gambit, attempting to attract investment from the sovereign wealth fund of oil rich states. President Ali appears to want to succeed where Jagdeo failed, even to the point of suggesting that Saudi Arabia make money available to Guyana from the Saudi Investment Development Fund. He probably meant the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF).

The President was reported to have said, “Let us talk about how to establish the Fund here. With that money, we can start the process of pushing projects forward…I can assure you that we can get our technical people in a room with you, and we will not leave until we are finished with the project.”

The Saudi delegation must have found that amusing. Imagine Guyana, a country which in the next five years is likely to be producing more barrels of oil per day than Venezuela, asking for the Saudis to bring money from the SIDF here.

The SIDF, however, is not an international development Fund. It is exclusively for industrial development in Saudi Arabia. If the President had done his homework, he would not have made such a faux pas.

Similarly, he should not have made the outrageous suggestion for a Saudi desk in the Ministry of Finance. That is not how international diplomacy works.

Diplomacy is not undertaken in the manner in which the President assumes. All contact is usually done through the Foreign Ministry.

When senior foreign dignitaries come to Guyana, their visits are usually preceded by substantial groundwork by local diplomats and their counterparts. The senior officials usually come to put their stamp of approval on what was agreed to, or to meet with local officials, including the President, to iron out thorny issues.

Increasingly, however, President Ali and his Ministers appear keen to be doing the diplomatic groundwork. As a result, visits by foreign missions may not be fruitful because these missions were not preceded by sufficient diplomatic groundwork.

It is not for the politicians to do the groundwork. That is a task for diplomats. But what appears to be happening in Guyana, is that the politicians are seeking to engage in the nitty-gritty of diplomacy, to the embarrassment of the country.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

 

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