That Venezuelan threat

Dear Editor,

In your April 5 issue, you ran a column by Odeen Ishmael which sought to advance the PPP government’s desire to carry the Venezuelan border dispute with Guyana to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Ambassador Ishmael in his column does show some understanding of the false claim by Venezuela but Guyana going to the ICJ would be a mistake by the PPP and another reason for Guyanese to vote for change on May 11, so that we can get a foreign policy based on the best interests of Guyana and not an artificial Bolivarian concept that Venezuela s pushes in its own self-interest. In the first place it is only Venezuela among the global community of nations that has an issue with the borders of Guyana as defined by the 1899 arbitration process. There is no other country that supports Venezuela’s position that the Essequibo region is not part of the Guyanese nation. What is most helpful for Venezuela is for Guyana to ask the UN Secretary General to activate his Standby Team of Mediation Experts to help Venezuela understand that it needs to move on and accept the facts of the border with Guyana. As Ambassador Ishmael showed in his column, the whole issue of the so-called border dispute is a cold war construct which did not even get the support of the USA even though Venezuela was using the smoke screen of Guyana being a bridgehead for the spreading of communism in South America in the early 1960s. Guyana going to the ICJ would give the impression that the Guyanese authorities think that there is something left unfinished by the 1899 award. Even if Guyana were to take the matter to the ICJ and that body were to rule that the status quo should remain then there comes the question of enforcement of the court’s decision. Venezuela knows that with Guyana, it by far has the military advantage. The problems in enforcing the decisions of the ICJ are well documented. One good source is the 2003 thesis by Mutlaq Majed Al-Qahtani where he looked in detail at the issue of Enforcement of International Judicial Decisions of the ICJ in public international law. What Guyana needs to do in its self-interest is to sign agreements with the ABC countries so that in the event of Venezuelan military incursions into Guyanese territory it can quickly call on military support from those countries to counter the Venezuelan aggression. Also, Guyana should have a plan in place to quickly implement back-up systems in the event Venezuela were to cut, on short or no notice, the Petro Caribe programme under which Guyana gets concessionary terms for Venezuelan oil products. Also in agreements for sale of products like rice Guyana should not let Venezuela commit to buying more than about a quarter of Guyana’s total production so as to minimize impacts in case Venezuela were to cancel purchase agreements as part of economic warfare against Guyana. The bottom line is that Guyanese have to vote for a government whose foreign policy is going to be in the best interests of Guyana and not swayed by romantic Bolivarian ideology and Trojan horse economic agreements. Shamir Ally and Fitzgerald Yaw”