Benchwarmers and fence-sitters

Dec 12, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The whole world was talking about Guyana and loving everything about this country. Everybody was speaking in hushed tones about the awesome nature of Guyana’s prospects, and all wanted a piece of the national wealth.

All and sundry were rushing here to plant a stake and erect a tent, investments and partnerships, those were called. Guyana was the greatest, yet now that Guyana has its back to the wall, at its lowest, it is surprising and discomforting that all of Guyana’s friends and neighbors, even some of its own countrymen, have become frozen-lipped and chickenhearted. When Guyanese look around and take stock, the only ones that are there for them are their own native-born sisters and brothers.

CARICOM has been the closest, but in this border controversy with Venezuela, it has been the strangest. Some friendship and brotherhood (sisterhood, too) have come, but after some time had elapsed, and when the silence grew so thick that its thunder made the hair stand on end. Perhaps the sharp sentiments of some Guyanese commentators prompted the belated platitudes that had a forced and artificial quality about them. In truth, platitudes are usually hollow, and those of CARICOM certainly left a hollow feeling in many Guyanese at different levels in this society.

America is the strongest, and has been the staunchest ally in the endless quest for genuine democracy in Guyana. America was all over the place and all the time intimately involved in Guyana’s affairs in the brutal trials of the last decades. Today, when Guyana needs America the most, it is a shadow of itself. There can be no question that the draining Ukraine situation, and the explosive Israeli-Palestinian conflict (one-sided war, to be blunt), have both occupied much time and strength of the US. However, that falls short as either excuse or justification for America’s coolness, cool and too careful language, in the heat of Guyana-Venezuela border developments in the aftermath of the ICJ.

The prior keenness of US attention, and the earlier vigor of US actions in Guyana, now feels like the stuff of imagination. Before America was in lockstep with developments good and bad in Guyana; today that America is not as engaged as it once was. The question that cannot be shaken is what went wrong. Another is why is Guyana being treated as some distant stranger, a one-time friend preferred not to be around?

Similarly, the European Union (EU) was hand and foot with Guyana in recent years, but in recent days, as such relate to Maduro and his mad recklessness, this body of substance and power is content to issue pronouncements in the most careful diplomatic language. It is as if the greatest care is taken so as not to step on Nicolas Maduro’s toes, and to give him the widest berth possible. The Venezuelan president is running wild, and Guyana’s once stalwart friends are a composite of blandness and timidness on this border controversy of ours. The urgency embedded in the latest developments with de facto annexation standing foremost has not shaken any group out of its state of too cool to be true.

Even the Chinese have practiced walking on eggshells, in that the few words they have expressed are all coated in velvet, with warmth for Guyana sadly lacking. It seems that all of Guyana’s friends shrink from unequivocal support for Guyana, and limit themselves to the tired diplomatic jargon of ‘let peace prevail in the region.’ It is understood that some of Guyana’s relationships have existing interests in Venezuela and that they dwarf what is held in Guyana. There is also the irresistible lure of what the potential of a fully reopened and highly functioning Venezuela could mean in days to come. There is what we could call threading of the needle, so as to be on the right side of Venezuela’s considerations, even if that means a grave injustice is done to Guyana’s cause. Our view is that this is no accident, not with almost everyone seemingly speaking from the same playbook. Maduro’s plans are outrageous, and should be offensive to American and European sensibilities, competing interests notwithstanding. Yet Guyanese live in this curious world of blandishments and artful dodges.

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Benchwarmers, fence-sitters, Guyana, Prospects, Wealth

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