Of `gunboat' diplomacy and Rodney -- Suriname, Venezuela Hostility; 20th anniversary of Walter Rodney's death RICKEY SINGH COLUMN Guyana Chronicle June 11, 2000 BY SHEER coincidence, June 13 this year holds a very special significance for the people of Guyana, at home and abroad. For on Tuesday, June 13, Guyana's neighbour to the east, Suriname, must give an expected positive response for the resumption of oil drilling operations by CGX Energy Inc. at the location from which it was driven off in a surprisingly reckless act by Surinamese gun boats. It also happens to be the day that marks the 20th anniversary of the assassination of that great people's historian and fighter for freedom and justice, Walter Rodney, at the height of a courageous struggle against the dictatorship of the PNC and its doctrine of `party paramountcy'. With Guyana facing hostility from `neighbours' in the west (Venezuela) and the east (Suriname), while coping with the consequences of flood waters, and at the same time having to focus on constitutional changes and plans for new elections, this is by no means the best of times for the country. But it has had worse times, and will overcome! Professor Rupert Lewis of the Department of Government of the University of the West Indies, in writing his intellectual and political biography of Rodney - a work that is a must read for anyone interested about what Rodney represented - is specific: "His assassination on June 13, 1980, by an ex-officer of the Guyana Defence Force, put an end to the life of one of the most creative Caribbean scholar-activists of the 1960s and 1970s and enabled the PNC regime to continue in power for over a decade with negative social, economic, political and moral consequences for the Guyanese people. "It would not be until 1992 that a fair election was held in Guyana and the People's National Congress would be defeated and replaced by Cheddi Jagan's People's Progressive Party ...." As editor of the now defunct `Caribbean Contact' and as a correspondent for the Caribbean News Agency (CANA), I was instrumental in helping to locate the GDF soldier, Gregory Smith, who was linked with the murder of Rodney. He was traced to his then hide-out in French Guiana. The shame is that for all the regional and international-focused activities and seven years under governments of the PPP/Civic, Smith is still to be extradited to Guyana to face trial for the murder of a Guyanese patriot who was, posthumously, given this country's highest honour, the Order of Excellence, by the late President Jagan. The government cannot honestly claim that it has treated as a priority issue the bringing to justice of those involved in the murder of Rodney. And for all its own rhetoric, the party Rodney co-founded, the Working People's Alliance (WPA), seemed to have lost the will, for whatever reason, to keep up the pressure. Now, as the WPA marks the 20th anniversary of Rodney's assassination, I wonder what Walter would have said, had he survived the assassin's bomb, about some of the strange political manoeuvrings, alliances and accommodations in Georgetown that also involves a party, the PNC, whose politics had so degraded and paralysed the spirit of a people, as was noted by Martin Carter long before he too left us. Border Neighbours On the border fronts, having had to sharply rebuke the latest attempt by Venezuela at economic aggression against Guyana by the `warnings' against the impending operations of the American corporation, Beal Aerospace Technology in the Essequibo region, the Guyana government was left to confront the gunboat diplomacy of Suriname, as dramatised in the case of the oil drilling operations of the Canadian company, CGX Energy Inc. There is a school of thought that the Surinamese bellicosity may not altogether be unrelated to a Venezuelan agenda, which itself may be linked to the machinations of huge transnational corporations that move in mysterious ways their interests to fulfill - oil, gold, etc. This perhaps may be unfair to Venezuela, currently in a general election phase. Venezuela, nevertheless, needs to be constantly reminded about its own stated commitment to pursue a peaceful solution to its territorial dispute with Guyana in the best tradition of good neighbourliness. No government in Caracas should really expect a government in Georgetown to put on hold any economic development in what, after all, is recognised in international law as within Guyana's sovereign jurisdiction. Put simply, that includes every square inch of the two thirds of Guyanese territory to which Venezuela persists in laying claim, despite the ruling of the 1899 Paris Tribunal that the existing boundaries between Venezuela and Guyana constitute "a full, perfect and final settlement". In the case of Suriname, when it acceded to full membership of CARICOM in July, 1995 at a Heads of Government Conference in Georgetown, chaired then by the late President Jagan, it knew fully well of its and Guyana's obligations to pursue their dispute over an area in the New River Triangle in the Corentyne in a peaceful manner and consistent with international law. Suriname's Move Suriname was represented at that CARICOM Summit by then President Runaldo Venetiaan. He is the politician now expected to assume the presidency again - perhaps during this week - on the basis of last month's general elections at which his New Front coalition, that includes the politically wily Jaggernauth Lachmon, won 33 of the 51 seats. Like outgoing President Jules Wijdenbosch, Venetiaan had stated, and since reaffirmed, his policy of peaceful resolution of the territorial dispute. Is the Surinamese military aware of such an official policy as articulated by past and present governments? If yes, then what is the proper explanation for the crude, vulgar show of force against the CGX oil drilling operations in an area demarcated to be within the territorial jurisdiction of Guyana and shall so remain until otherwise, if ever, altered in accordance with international law. Good neighbours do not behave as the Surinamese `gunboat people' did against the CGX people. Do the Surinamese military, with all the known serious social, economic and political problems in their own country, really think that the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), however much the need to boost its military hardware and manpower resources, will be intimidated by such bellicosity? Without any encouragement at jingoistic, sabre-rattling politics on either side, the Surinamese military will know from its own bitter past experience that it cannot afford to take the GDF for granted. Priority Needs While pushing ahead, commendably, on the diplomatic front, the Guyana Government must now give urgent consideration on how to readjust some of its development priorities to ensure a realistic blend of better equipping and strengthening the GDF and in taking care of the essential needs of the Guyanese people. This is a challenge to be faced by President Bharrat Jagdeo's administration and party - irrespective of current plans for coming elections - in view of an apparent policy by both Venezuela and Suriname to talk, diplomatically, about talks, while simultaneously pursuing acts of hostility against Guyana. Fortunately, for all of Guyana's own prevailing divisions, neither Venezuela nor Suriname will be able to exploit such divisions to their advantage, to judge from what the political opposition, business sector, labour movement and other segments of the Guyanese society have been saying. CARICOM, to which both Guyana and Suriname belong, as they do in the wider Association of Caribbean States (ACS) -of which Venezuela is also a member - has been alerted by Guyana to the controversy resulting from Suriname's `gunboat' tactics. People of goodwill, across the region and beyond, and with the interest of the Surinamese and Guyanese people at heart, will be working and hoping for the return to its original oil drilling location of CGX this week while efforts continue at technical and political levels to deal with the substantive territorial dispute between these two Caribbean neighbours. Follow the goings-on in Guyana in Guyana Today