The issue of most interest to Guyanese where Brazil is concerned, is her joint challenge (along with Australia and Thailand) to EU farm subsidies at the World Trade Organization (WTO), which, if successful, will sweep away the Sugar Protocol that allows us to sell our sugar in a protected market. In other words, the mainstay of our economy and our largest export earner is under direct threat from Brazil. And what does the communique have to say on this topic? Well, item 14 reads:

“In the context of the World Trade Organisation, the Presidents reiterated the importance of a stable rules based multilateral trading sysem and reaffirmed their countries’ commitment to the current multilateral negotiations and the full and balanced achievement of the Doha Development Agenda.”

Whatever this means, it doesn’t imply any concession on the part of Brazil where the matter of our economic survival is concerned. That country had already indicated earlier that the challenge at the WTO would go ahead, and it was left to ourselves and other ACP countries to negotiate what transitional arrangements were possible. However, in a context where the Guyana Government is insistent on giving so much to Brazil, and considering that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is promoting his country as representing the interests of the developing world in international trade negotiations, is item 14 in the communique really the best that President Jagdeo could extract from his counterpart in Brasilia? Are we to assume that he has accepted without murmur Brazil’s ‘hands-off’ approach when it comes to creating a cushion for nations like Guyana when the sugar regime goes?

And President Jagdeo was accommodating in other ways as well. He conveyed, for example, “Guyana’s support for Brazil’s permanent membership of the Security Council.” It is not that Brazil should not be a permanent member of the Security Council; it is simply that our backing, insignificant though it might be, and by extension our modest influence with the members of Caricom in relation to their backing, should not be guaranteed in circumstances where we are getting nothing, or at least, nothing of significance in return.

More seriously, President Jagdeo appeared to commit us to the redrafting of the geopolitical map as Brazil sees it. There was reference to “the project of South America as a space of development...” and the reaffirmation “that physical integration of the countries of South America form the basis of that South America as a system of countries...” While the rider was included that this would be “without prejudice to its [Guyana’s] Caribbean linkage,” in practice that phrase means very little. A division of the hemisphere into geographical units of north, south and central, has great implications for the Caribbean, and in particular for our traditional relationships. Before we sign on to Brasilia’s hemispheric grand design, which in any case it must be said does not have the unequivocal support of all nations on the continent, we have to be clear first about what our own geo-political perceptions are, and following from that, what our own geo-strategic interests are.

And then there are all those other things that Brazil has been promoting for so long: the road linking Brazil’s Para state with Roraima state, courtesy of French Guiana, Suriname and Guyana; and the “integration” (the communique’s words) of Guyana and Roraima. The latter involves “the construction of a road linking the two capitals, a port and hydroelectric facility in Guyana and an industrial zone in Boa Vista.” It should be noted that the road (through Guyana) and the deep-water harbour (in Guyana) will be for the purposes of transporting goods to Roraima state, and making the export of goods from the newly industrialised area of Boa Vista a viability. The hydroelectric facility too will primarily serve the industrial zone of Boa Vista.

What Brazil is getting out of this deal is clear; what Guyana will get is not so clear, and is certainly not specified in the communique. The most we have had from the Government is vague assurances about development in the abstract. However, there has been absolutely no public discussion about the downside of all these projects, and the kind of arrangements which would have to be put in place in order to protect ourselves from the environmental pressures and the myriad other problems which these grand schemes will create.

It is not that sooner or later we will not need to be linked infrastructurally to the continent; what is important, however, is how this is done, and according to what time-table - which incidentally should not be set by the IDB which is promoting the “integration” project with some vigour. The point is that our relationship with Brazil is very assymetrical; it could not be otherwise, considering that country’s landmass, its huge population and the size of its economy. As such, these proposed programmes carry enormous possible consequences for us, while the same is not the case for our neighbour. It is up to us, however, to do the planning necessary to ensure that we safeguard our own interests.

This Government has a poor record in the department of foreign affairs, and a poor record in the sphere of forward planning (look at the fiasco of Suriname and CGX, for example). In addition, its grasp of geopolitics is uncertain. Given the magnitude of the possible consequences of the “integration” project, the administration needs to inaugurate a national debate on what are essentially revolutionary proposals. In addition, it is about time that the opposition as well arose from its deep slumber, and addressed its mind urgently to the topic; it has as much of a duty to the nation to do so as has the Government.