The Pincers
Editorial
So the chickens are finally coming home to roost. Last Sunday it was reported in this newspaper that Venezuela had lodged a protest with the Government of Guyana and United Nations Good Officer Sir Alister McIntyre alleging that oil exploration licences granted by this country extended into Venezuelan waters. Then President Chavez marked the one hundredth anniversary of the Paris Arbitral Award with a statement describing the decision as "null and an irritant." He went on to say that Venezuela had started to take "some actions in the past few months in order to bring the issue to the negotiating table." As if that were not enough bad news to absorb in the course of a single week, on Wednesday Guyanese learnt that there had been troop movements on Venezuela's side of the border. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release said that Minister Rangel of Venezuela had assured his Guyanese counterpart that these posed "no threat to Guyana's territorial integrity and national sovereignty." By Friday, the population had been advised - again by this newspaper - that shots had been fired by the Venezuelan National Guard from the island of Ankoko, that there had been overflights of camouflaged helicopters at Kaikan, that the Venezuelan garrison on Ankoko had been reinforced, and that still photos and video clips of the Barima River area had been taken by the National Guard and civilian occupants of a helicopter which had landed at Imbotero on the Venezuelan side of the frontier. Yesterday's news was no better, with the abduction of Guyanese passengers in four speedboats by a Surinamese Coast Guard vessel, which seized them only 200 yards from the Guyana bank of the Corentyne River. And what does all this mean? It would appear to be a resurgence of an active phase in Venezuela's irredentist obsession, for which the Government's traditional approach to border matters has no answer. A series of incidents of this kind, coming as they do in such quick succession, probably constitutes the beginning of a pressure campaign. Exactly how that will evolve will be dependent on a variety of factors, including the initial responses of the Guyana Government. What has to be recognized, however, is that Venezuela's options are varied, and she has more than one lever to use against this country, such as oil, economic pressure and spurious border incidents of one kind or another. It seems that she may already be invoking one of these (an old one), namely, the spooking of potential investors in the Essequibo region. The fact that Suriname has also engaged in what is essentially an act of official piracy against Guyana is equally significant. Traditionally, whenever the western frontier is under stress, the eastern one flares up as well. In the late 1960s, as those who were old enough will remember, there was co-ordination between Venezuela and Suriname to squeeze Guyana, which became known as the 'Pengel Pincers' after the Suriname premier of the time. Prima facie, therefore, it would seem as if the pincers are back in action again. So what, the public will want to know, is the immediate aim of this current Venezuelan activity? If one is to take President Chavez at his latest word, he probably wants to force Guyana to the negotiating table on a bilateral basis where he will present his demands. Of course, the assumption would be in that instance that Guyana would have been suitably intimidated following a period of threatening moves on the part of Venezuela, plus a series of complaints relating to events either real, or more likely, imagined. (The protest about the oil exploration licences may be a case in point.) It would be important for the Government to our west to lodge formal protests of different kinds in order to persuade international opinion that she has real cause for complaint against Guyana, and that her 'sabre-rattling,' to use Mr Hoyte's term, is justified. Depending on how things play out, President Chavez conceivably could be even more ambitious in his aims and moves. (It might be noted that it is unfortunate that Sir Alister McIntyre has indicated his desire of relinquishing the post of Good Officer at this time giving President Chavez more room for manoeuvre to press for bilateral talks which are really not in our interest.) And what should be done? This is not the time for recriminations. Whatever mistakes have been made, we have to start at the point at which we find ourselves now. The first thing the Government must do is to create a national front on the issue. It has indicated, albeit somewhat belatedly, that it intends to brief the Parliamentary parties, and one would hope that when it does so it will not operate in its normal secretive mode, but will place all the information at its disposal on the table. If the Government wants assistance, then the Foreign Ministry must, for a change, give adequate briefings. Secondly, it must also, with the Opposition's help, inaugurate a campaign to sensitize the nation. Nothing is more important when faced with external aggression of one sort or another, than a country informed and united. The Government will need an advisory body or bodies comprising all kinds of talent from the entire political spectrum, plus representatives from the military, to help in developing strategies to deal with the current situation, and to do some serious contingency planning. We cannot afford to be taken by surprise by the President to the west - or to the east, for that matter. We have to apply some brain power to 'what if' scenarios, and ensure that we have fall-back plans. Such possible strategies for obvious reasons cannot be discussed in public; however, at a press conference on Friday President Jagdeo was reported as referring to the mobilization of international support which he said could not be carried out in the glare of international publicity. He is both right and wrong about this. There are some initiatives which have to be pursued in a very discreet way, but at the same time we should also be making a great deal of noise in the international arena at the present time. We cannot afford to be pasted back into a corner one step at a time; if we are going to create a furore, it must be done at step one, not at step seven when it might be too late. Even if at the present time President Chavez is just testing the temperature of the water, we should still be prepared for possible future occasions. And finally, President Jagdeo needs a crash course on border issues, preferably from a variety of sources. This will, after all, be the biggest test of his presidency.
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