Signals of weakness
On September 7, the Defence Secretariat finally issued a press statement on the violation of Guyana's territory by Surinamese army personnel at Scotsburg. It said that the Surinamese military had acted aggressively in an incident involving a Guyanese boat and passengers "that ended at the Scotsburg beach." The Guyanese, said the release, had been resisting the efforts of the Surinamese military to remove the boat from the Guyana shore where it had run aground after a chase on the Corentyne river. As a consequence, it continued, the Government of Guyana had lodged a formal protest with the Suriname Government, adding mysteriously that this action followed "a pledge made by the Surinamese President R. Venetiaan in Brasilia to investigate the incident." This is most extraordinary. The incident in question happened on Friday, August 25, and it has taken a week and a half for the Government of Guyana to confirm it, despite the fact that the first report was carried in this newspaper on August 29. At his press conference held one week after the incident, Dr Luncheon seemed to perceive no great sense of urgency to respond in the matter. After telling the media corps that the Defence Board was not yet in receipt of a report on the incident, he said that "governmental responses would need to be made in the context of the availability of accurate and comprehensive information." Until that was concluded "to our satisfaction," he continued, "I believe that some of the concerns expressed about responses would have to be held in abeyance." In our reports of the incident we made mention of an eye-witness account of how the Surinamese left the foreshore on sighting a Berbice Anti-Smuggling Squad (BASS) Land Rover approaching. We also said that the GDF base at Benab had been notified while the incident was in progress, and that Police 'B' Division had received a report of a passenger boat being chased and shots being fired, although not of a landing on the foreshore. Are the Guyanese public being asked to believe that after the lapse of more than seven days none of these agencies was able to give an account of what had occurred, or in the case of BASS, what they had witnessed? If so, it seems that the security forces are in a worse state than anyone ever dreamed of and the Defence Board should mount an immediate inquiry as to what went wrong. It is not just the procrastination over the report which is disturbing, there is also the sense that the incident was being played down at an official level. Police Divisional Commander Larry George, for example, was reported as describing the event as "not alarming" at one point. If a territorial violation by Suriname is not alarming, then what on earth is? And then there is the curious wording of the press statement. What does the Defence Board mean when it says that the protest follows a pledge made by President Venetiaan to investigate the incident? Shouldn't a protest follow a violation? What does it have to do with whether the Suriname head of state agrees to investigate the incident or not? Could it be that this apparent reluctance to act with firmness and dispatch originates in a fear of aggravating the newly installed President Venetiaan, whom the Government hopes will be prepared to negotiate the return of the CGX rig? This possibility receives some support from the fact that the administration seems as prepared to make the mistake of making the CGX contract available to Suriname, as it was the Beal contract to Venezuela. The Government says it is standing firm on the matter of the borders, but it is doing precisely the opposite. In a hurry to hand out agreements to neighbouring presidents which are none of their business, the administration is slow to react to the harassment of our citizens and to territorial violations, and even slower to issue formal protests about them. What message does it think is being sent to Venezuela and Suriname? And what message is it sending to Guyanese? Does the Government expect the citizenry to have confidence in its capacity to manage frontier issues, when it takes more than a week just to collect data on a simple, straightforward case of intrusion? Giving off signals of weakness will land us in more trouble with our neighbours, not less.
 Follow the goings-on in Guyana
|