H@RD TRUTHS BY GHK LALL – Sounds like border discussion

Dec 12, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – “I will be there in answer to the call by colleague CARICOM Heads of Government on 9 December, 2023 for appropriate dialogue between the leaders of Venezuela and Guyana to ensure peaceful coexistence, the application and respect for international law and the avoidance of the use or threats of force.” The words are those of Guyana’s President Dr. Irfaan Ali responding to Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines.  I struggle with this response to the prime minister, given the government’s vigorous insistence about no discussions on the heated Guyana-Venezuela border controversy.

Peaceful coexistence means that there is no border controversy of note that exists and pushes the two neighbors to menacing loggerheads.  Peaceful coexistence cannot be “ensured” when there is this tortured border issue pitting the two countries against one another.  To sum this up: peaceful coexistence does not exist in a vacuum.  It sounds to me, as if President Ali plans to deal in the improbable, if not the impossible.  That is, he will do his best to “ensure peaceful coexistence” but without any reference to the thorny border controversy that has roiled relations between Guyana and Venezuela, and who holds sovereignty over it.  In other words, it is as if there is no divisive border context.  This talk about peaceful coexistence would be both irrelevant and untimely but only if there are no clouds of war in some form hovering.  We all know on both sides of the border that the words and actions of the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, have relentlessly raised the stakes in that direction.  Hence, the Guyana’s president emphasis on peaceful coexistence.  There would not be any need for a conference in anyplace but Georgetown or Caracas, and without the need of regional intermediaries, were it not for this combustible border controversy.  There would be no need, no call by anyone, for the interventions of Brazil’s President Lula, and the public and behind-the scenes efforts of the 14-member CARICOM heads, to bring the leaders of Guyana and Venezuela to a neutral place of conversation.

All the reasonings and positions taken with respect to “ensure peaceful coexistence” also have the fullest application to the other elements of President Ali’s response to the meeting host, the St Vincentian Prime Minister.  “Application and respect for international law” could not be intended, in this particular instance, to mean trading relations, or cross-border smuggling.  No one should miss the relationship (though unsaid) to the recent ruling of the ICJ on December 1, and another to come later.  International law has its greatest restraining value in reducing, if not eliminating, tensions between two neighboring countries on the brink of actual hostilities.  The president may want us to believe that application and respect for international law is an abstraction, something raised for academic purposes, in St Vincent, while maintaining the pretense that the border controversy is not involved.  It is inevitable that since application and respect for international law is going to be part of the agenda, then which country has the right hand and the incontestable hand in this issue will surface.  We doubt that the Guyanese and Venezuelan presidents are going to talk in hypotheticals (Country A and Country B), in efforts to disguise the underlying issue in the center of the room.  President Lula and PM Gonsalves should have their own ideas about such.

The third element extracted from President Ali’s response speaks to “avoidance of the use or threats of force.”  Guyana’s concern about force by any means is not some wayward leaf out of nowhere hanging in the air, but as founded on Venezuela’s totally baseless border claims.  Regarding how President Ali and his team would be able to circle around talking about who owns and controls Essequibo in the midst of all his serious representations is anybody’s guess.  Quite frankly, it does not look feasible in the least.  Not a blade of grass is not the stuff of fiction or political fluff.  It should not be because it is so real.

I am pained to point to what I call conflicts in construction and vision as it relates to the Guyana border issue in the St Vincent discussions.  In my thinking, Excellency is trying to resolve how to make the immovable object and irresistible force work in harmony. Peace could come at a price.  International law may be observed under duress, which only endures for so long.  And, there comes a time when the envelope is pushed and threats are not avoided but transformed into tangible and irreversible action. Having said all this, there is keen recognition of President Ali’s challenges in St Vincent.  Though I believe that he is trying to square the circle, and having things both ways at the same time, I assure him of my fullest support.  God’s speed, and may God guide him. The President and his government however, cannot be this naïve, so shortsighted, and expect the same of Guyanese.  Essequibo and issues of sovereignty and control who belongs and who must rule, just have to be in the conversations in Kingston. The president’s own words feed into this; the border controversy hinges and lives on what he is seeking.

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

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• CARICOM, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, GHK Lall, Government, H@rd Truths

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