Essequibo lessons

Essequibo lessons

Wesley Gibbings

Current global developments are today contributing to an understanding of how our respective Caribbean countries are obliged to navigate international relations like few other occasions in recent history.

We can spend forever examining the internal dynamics that have spurred alarmingly diverse views, even over here, on the situations in Ukraine, Gaza, and even Haiti.

“Alarming”, perhaps because in today’s world there are countless avenues for the accessing of authoritative information and opinion on global affairs even while we are exposed to an abundance of dogma and ideological shibboleth.

On other occasions we can have a closer look at these three situations that have elicited quite an interesting, if not disturbing, variety of perspectives within our respective Caribbean countries, even in the face of general consistency at official national levels.

We have a university that owes us much more on such questions than has been extended both inside and outside its hallowed, traditionally fortified halls. Principal Rose-Marie Belle Antoine has urged the lowering of the drawbridges. For, this institution is a singularly important portal to greater public understanding of complex issues.

It also remains important to keep our gaze fixed firmly on our own geographical neighbourhood. For instance, the absence of an informed, enlightened Haitian solution persists and this will continue to be the case. Invasion by invitation, of all varieties, appears inadvisable.

But now, and just as urgently … and yet again … Venezuela’s longstanding expansionary ambitions with special emphasis on Guyana’s place in the scheme of things have recently and dramatically re-emerged.

It has always interested me that even in the face of intense, protracted, murderous internecine conflict, Venezuelan politicians have so frequently occupied bipartisan space on the troublesome Essequibo question.

It is hard to find, even among adult Venezuelans being welcomed here, those who do not believe that the land space comprising two-thirds of Guyanese territory is theirs. It’s taught alongside the alphabet at school. There is no argument between competing political parties save for occasional assertions of treasonous compromise.

This must certainly concern regional, conflicted, ‘Chavistas’ who have been inclined to gleefully toe the Caracas line on virtually everything, including the outright violent oppression and neglect that have led to unparalleled migration challenges in our part of the world. They do this even as they embrace a notion of Guyanese fraternity, and tout Caricom ambitions.

Had these people been vigilant on the subject of the Essequibo challenge in the face of Guyana’s social and economic transformation, their unrepentant devotion to fake egalitarian revolution might have taken a deserved turn for the worst much earlier than is currently the case.

Even so, there has been no unequivocal posturing on the subject from the red berets.

That a “Guayana Esequiba” referendum in Venezuela should now be deployed as part of a process of political recovery in the face of electoral threats and brittle political circumstance, tells us a story we should have all been familiar with long before now. Makes me wonder about the state of Caribbean ‘Chavismo’. They must all certainly be in some form of doleful confusion and contemplation.

This, you see, is not about being “left” or “right” or anywhere in the middle. The International Court of Justice will hopefully sooner rather than later determine it as a matter of juridical “right” and “wrong.” Though, even so, Venezuela seems afraid to engage the process.

It is also, significantly, a rare point of political cohesion in Guyana. Two political organisations that have been trading brutal rhetorical punches at each other have met and agreed, as has been the case in the past, that the challenge to Essequibo is a national issue requiring all hands on deck.

Sadly, such a predisposition is not always apparent in our case in T&T. There have been some significant lows. Incomprehensible Opposition foreign policy ‘whistleblowing” and the absurdity of proposed selective, personalised ‘sanctions’ slipped through the cracks of informed public commentary in the age of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, in Georgetown, Aubrey Norton and Irfaan Ali in an extremely rare display of solidarity, shook hands and met, and whatever the smirks across the table, partisan weapons were left outside just for that time. In Port of Spain, there are people who craved sanctions in 2020. There has been little shouldering of arms. Instead, there is the continued emptying of clips even as violence and murder stalk the land.

Clearly, there are lessons to be learned from Essequibo.