The President should distance himself from Jagdeo’s remarks

Sep 28, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The fisherfolk who are each receiving a fishing grant of G$150,000 should be very circumspect in cheering on Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo if and when he throws another tantrum against Suriname. Their interests stand to be affected by any belligerence on the part of the Government of Guyana.

If Suriname decides to get serious, they can permanently preclude Guyanese fishers from fishing in their waters. No one should get carried away with the false impression that somehow Suriname has to provide fishing licenses to Guyanese fisherfolk.

It is absolute nonsense for anyone to suggest that because of the CSME, Guyana has a right or legitimate expectation to fish in Suriname’s waters? No such right or expectation exists and if it were, then Trinidad and Suriname fishers could come and fish in our waters and we would be required to facilitate this.

The Caribbean Community Common Fisheries Policy, not the CSME, makes provision for member states of the Community to enter into fisheries agreements including to provide fishing opportunities in their waters. But any such agreement is subordinate to national jurisdiction and this explicitly stated in the fisheries policy.

Whatever agreement Guyana has signed with Suriname does not enjoy the binding force of a treaty. But if Jagdeo or anyone else for that matter feels that it does, they could seek to enforce it at the CCJ under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.

But the Guyana Government is not going down this route. It knows that those agreements which it signed do not create the rights to fish in Surinamese waters. The control of fishing in Suriname falls under the national jurisdiction of the Government of that country.

Without directly coming out and saying so, Jagdeo is implying that diplomatic efforts to resolve the fishing licenses’ controversy were protracted and had failed. Anyone with an iota of understanding of diplomacy however would appreciate that diplomacy takes time, considerable time and ought to be given time to succeed.

It is ironic that while claiming that diplomatic efforts had yielded little gains on the matter that Jagdeo had said that Guyana would take this matter to CARICOM. Is taking the matter to CARICOM not part of diplomacy?

Jagdeo has a mixed record of success in public diplomacy. It should be recalled that one of the biggest diplomatic failures was his Middle Eastern diplomacy.  During the global financial crisis he had made sojourns to a number of Middle Eastern countries including Kuwait, Libya, Syria and Jordan in the hope of accessing investment and financing from sovereign wealth funds.

This mission ended up being one of the grandest foreign policy failures. It is noticeable that Irfaan Ali is attempting to resurrect most of the failures of Jagdeo, including Middle Eastern diplomacy, reviving regional agriculture and seeking climate adaptation funding.

Jagdeo knows a thing or two about failed diplomacy. When Suriname expelled from Guyana’s waters, a vessel contracted to CGX from Guyana’s waters, Jagdeo’s efforts at resolving the matter diplomatically failed. He was forced then to take the matter to the International Tribunal of the Law of Sea Convention which after many years finally ruled in Guyana’s favour.

Jagdeo had better luck with Venezuela. A number of important agreements were reached including the signing of the Petro CARIBE agreement. But Venezuela opposed the establishment of a space launch centre in Guyana, one of Jagdeo’s pet projects which failed to lift-off.

Jagdeo was awarded with the title of ‘Champion of the Earth’ for his efforts on climate change. But after the failure at Copenhagen, where he was hoping that greater progress would have been made to monetize standing forests, Jagdeo’s international star pitched.

Irfaan Ali is seeking to reignite this issue again. He too will fail because his foreign policy is operating in the shadows of Jagdeo’s own failed initiatives.

The President has an obligation, indeed a duty, to distance himself from the threat of possible retaliatory action hinted by Jagdeo against Surinamese companies. This sort of talk by Jagdeo will scare away investors, not just from Suriname but from further afield. It is for the President to put some space between himself and Jagdeo’s tantrums on the matter.

A new round of diplomacy, minus Jagdeo and his threats, should be invoked and should be led by some of Guyana’s seasoned diplomats, not political hacks who understand little about the practice of diplomacy. If that fails, CARICOM should be asked to intervene diplomatically in resolving the dispute with Suriname.

In the meantime, Guyana should make attempts to repair the damage done by Jagdeo’s intemperate remarks. The country has much to gain and nothing to lose in keeping him as far away from this issue as possible.

(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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