DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

A po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist is warn­ing that ris­ing ten­sions be­tween Guyana and Venezuela could soon present the T&T Gov­ern­ment with a very se­ri­ous diplo­mat­ic prob­lem.

On Mon­day night, Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali post­ed a state­ment to his Face­book page al­leg­ing that Venezuela was try­ing to an­nex part of his coun­try. Hours ear­li­er Venezuela’s Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil had an­nounced plans for a ref­er­en­dum on De­cem­ber 3 to dis­cuss five points re­lat­ed to the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

The fifth point, which Dr said was most harm­ful, was the pro­pos­al to cre­ate the state of Guyana Es­se­qui­bo and pro­vide iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards to the peo­ple who re­side there. He al­so called on the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to in­ter­vene.

On Tues­day, af­ter they met to dis­cuss the mat­ter, Pres­i­dent Ali and Guyana’s Op­po­si­tion Leader Aubrey Nor­ton is­sued a joint state­ment con­demn­ing Venezuela’s “fla­grant vi­o­la­tion” of the rule of law which they said un­der­mines Guyana’s sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty. They agreed that no ef­fort would be spared to re­sist this at­tempt and reaf­firmed their com­mit­ment to the ju­di­cial process con­duct­ed un­der the aegis of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ). They said the ques­tions posed in Venezuela’s ref­er­en­dum vi­o­lat­ed the sanc­ti­ty of treaties.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to these de­vel­op­ments, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany said T&T might be forced to pick a side as the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty’s uni­ty will be test­ed.

“If there is any kind of hos­til­i­ty it has the po­ten­tial to split Cari­com, pri­mar­i­ly be­cause I would sus­pect that Cari­com would want to take the side of Guyana in such a sit­u­a­tion. Trinidad and To­ba­go, on the oth­er hand, may be in a very dif­fi­cult po­si­tion be­cause of the re­cent lift­ing of sanc­tions and all of the praise that has been heaped on Min­is­ter Young for his ac­com­plish­ments in this area. That may have been what Pres­i­dent Maduro was look­ing for, to get that kind of break­through,” he ex­plained.

Ghany was re­fer­ring to the Drag­on Gas deal signed be­tween Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young and Venezuela’s Oil Min­is­ter Pe­dro Tel­lechea at Mi­raflo­res, the of­fi­cial res­i­dence of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, on Sep­tem­ber 20.

He said T&T might be in a pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion if it is forced to choose in such a sit­u­a­tion.

“You have re­gion­al in­ter­ests and you have na­tion­al in­ter­ests and in such a sit­u­a­tion, re­gion­al and na­tion­al in­ter­ests may not nec­es­sar­i­ly co­in­cide. So, I think it would present a very awk­ward geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion for Trinidad and To­ba­go and I don’t know what kind of es­ca­la­tion Venezuela has in mind, if this is just sabre-rat­tling or if there is some­thing more be­hind it. But I think that it is a sit­u­a­tion that de­serves to be watched very close­ly. And I al­so think that Trinidad and To­ba­go needs to per­haps pre­pare it­self for what kind of re­sponse it will give in all of the like­ly sit­u­a­tions that could pos­si­bly arise out of this.”

Ghany said T&T’s tra­di­tion­al re­sponse has been to avoid in­ter­fer­ing in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of oth­er coun­tries. How­ev­er, he be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment will be caught in the po­lit­i­cal in­cen­tives be­ing bandied about by the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment ahead of polls next year.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go will have to de­cide if it stands with Cari­com or if it stands on its own. If it stands with Guyana as a Cari­com part­ner or what is its po­si­tion with Venezuela now that its Drag­on Gas and oth­er, Lo­ran-Man­a­tee, and all these oth­er things in the Gulf – whether they will be­come is­sues in a geopo­lit­i­cal game that is tied up in Venezue­lan elec­toral pol­i­tics go­ing in­to an elec­tion year in 2024,” he said.

How­ev­er, while the gov­ern­ment is yet to make its po­si­tion known de­spite ef­forts to reach Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne and Min­is­ter Young, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is de­mand­ing a de­ci­sive re­sponse.

Shad­ow min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Rod­ney Charles is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day, not­ing that the Op­po­si­tion wants the Gov­ern­ment to un­equiv­o­cal­ly sup­port Guyana in its bor­der dis­pute.

“At the very least, Trinidad and To­ba­go must lever­age our cur­rent good re­la­tions with Maduro to be an hon­est bro­ker to help re­solve the bor­der dis­pute. We can­not sit idly by, do noth­ing and hope for the best. That will not be in our long-term in­ter­est,” Charles said.

He said if not frontal­ly ad­dressed, this can cre­ate fu­ture chal­lenges for this coun­try.

The cen­turies-old ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute be­tween Guyana and Venezuela orig­i­nat­ed in the colo­nial era. It was un­suc­cess­ful­ly re­solved by an Ar­bi­tral Award in 1899 be­tween Venezuela and the then colony of British Guiana. In 2018, Guyana asked the ICJ to con­firm the res­o­lu­tion but Venezuela boy­cotted much of the pro­ce­dure, ar­gu­ing that the Unit­ed King­dom should be in­volved since Guyana was a British colony at the time of the Ar­bi­tral Award.