President Ali turns his back on the judicial process and disarms Guyana while doing so

Dec 18, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – In what can only be termed a stunning rebuke of the action of the Granger administration, President Ali turned his back on the judicial process that he reassured Guyanese he would not do before going off to the meeting with President Maduro of Venezuela.  In almost every statement to the Guyanese people prior to his departure for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, President Ali kept saying that he was not wavering from the process of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).  He kept repeating that the matter was before the ICJ and that was where the matter should be settled.  From his blustery press briefings, one got the impression that with a name like Mohamed Ali, he would have danced like a butterfly and stung like a bee when in the ring with President Maduro.  Instead, he melted like salt and restored Guyana’s territorial integrity to perpetual jeopardy.

Informed that Guyana was backed by CARICOM, CELAC, Brazil and other international partners, Guyanese were looking for a lightning punch from Ali to floor Maduro like the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali often did to his opponents.  This writer can hardly believe that it was the Amazon Warrior that landed flat on his back as the Bolivarian landed heavy punches that knocked Ali and the ICJ out of the Vincentian ring.  This is an affront to the Granger administration, a betrayal of unity on the border controversy and a serious setback for the future of Guyanese, particularly since Maduro gave up nothing.

The results of the summit are embarrassing to say the least and I want to be kind to President Ali and say that he chose to give up the judicial process with his eyes wide open rather than being inveigled into doing so.  But from the language in the Joint Declaration, particularly in paragraphs 2 and 4, President Ali revealed his naivety, poor negotiating skills and rendered the value of any judicial decision of the ICJ impotent.  It is not clear what the urgency was to agree to such outcomes of the summit without the benefit of inputs from the Opposition and the Guyanese people.  There was no harm in asking for a few hours to ensure that he protected the interests of the Guyanese people by properly preserving his position on the ICJ.

The expression “read between the lines and not only what is on the line” is a cliché that is crucial to negotiations and is elevated to the level of a technique, especially in diplomatic negotiations.  The use of this cliché is even more critical when dealing with a matter as serious as the territorial integrity of a country and sovereignty over that territory.  Ceding ground is the last thing that one wants to do on a matter as consequential as a border controversy and one in which your position is not only valid but just. This knowledge apparently escaped President Ali as can be gleaned from operative paragraph 2 of the Joint Declaration.  A key word in paragraph 2 is “any” which governs the word “controversies.”

Together the words “any controversies,” along with the rest of the language in the paragraph, opened the opportunity to have the border controversy returned to bilateral talks.  President Maduro gave President Ali the words “international law” which the latter had been flashing to all and sundry.  But then President Maduro cleverly included the words “including the Geneva Agreement dated February 17, 1966,” as the mechanism for such talks, thus maintaining the position that he always held.  Ali’s failure to modify paragraph 2 with words like “except that which is before the ICJ” meant that he conceded the border controversy can return to bilateral talks as Maduro wanted.

The negotiating skill of President Maduro emerged again in paragraph 4, the contents of which he carefully distanced from paragraph 2, and subtly used to get President Ali, by his own doing, to render any ICJ decision against Venezuela impotent.  President Maduro readily acknowledged that the matter was before the ICJ as Guyana wanted him to do.  That did not cause President Maduro as much harm as Ali’s acceptance that Venezuela has the right to ignore the decision of the ICJ.  One would have thought that President Ali would have been very vigilant when it came to language in any paragraph dealing with the ICJ, much less the only one in the Joint Declaration.  President Ali’s failure to modify operative paragraph 2 means that a rejection of the decision of the ICJ by Venezuela as catered for in paragraph 4 would require Guyana to honour that position, again immediately returning the matter to bilateral talks as Venezuela prefers.  The sad reality is that, in the context of this declaration, Guyana does not have the same right to reject a decision of the ICJ if the ruling was inimical to its interest.

Pro-government statements have emerged to suggest that the outcome of the summit guarantees a de-escalation of tensions, and the region will be a zone of peace.  For that to happen, Guyana had to accept also that it was as much an aggressor, capable as Venezuela of escalating the conflict.  Guyanese are aware that, while we call ourselves Amazon Warriors, we have never displayed that attitude towards Venezuela and singularly does not have the capacity to do so.  It is disappointing therefore to see sister CARICOM countries seemingly transferring our aggression for victory in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) to the border controversy with Venezuela.  As innocuous as the words “refrain … from escalating any conflict or disagreement” appear in paragraph 6, Venezuela can easily call Guyana an aggressor if it sought to conduct military exercises with a country like the USA or worse yet, if it agreed to the US having a long-term military presence here.  He, in effect, agreed to disarm Guyana.

Equally troubling was the willingness to agree to the use of the word “dispute” in relation to the territorial matter between the two countries.  Since Ali has now agreed that the territory is in dispute, Venezuela can raise any objection to decisions made by Guyana regarding the use of the Essequibo.  An objection by Venezuela becomes a controversy in the meaning of paragraph 2 of the Joint Declaration.  It is amazing how President Ali has caused Guyana to slip back in time and have the Sword of Damocles perpetually hanging over its head.

Regards,
Rawle Lucas

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• Granger administration, Grenadines, Guyana, President Ali, St Vincent, the ICJ out of the Vincentian, Venezuela

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