Let us pick up where our editorials of last Friday and Sunday left off in their discussion of the warm glow caused by the maritime award and the way forward with respect to our foreign policy in general and more specifically, the management of the border controversy with our western neighbour.

Notwithstanding the credible impersonation by some high authorities of the sand-seeking ostrich of popular myth, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would appear to be in a parlous state.

Former Ambassador Ronald Austin’s insightful article of 25th September 2007 in the Guyana Review (“Whither Guyana’s Foreign Policy?”) reinforces the widely held view that in spite of the sterling efforts of the Director General and a handful of senior officers, the Ministry is woefully undermanned, particularly at the middle and senior levels, if not perilously demoralised. Anecdotal evidence indicates that this is a situation that obtains equally in our diplomatic missions abroad.

And both Mr Austin’s analysis and Sunday’s leader lamented the negligent loss of valuable documents relating to the integrity of our land and maritime boundaries. While in any system, people will come and go, institutional memory is an indispensable commodity. The preservation of valuable archival material, as a permanent repository of accumulated knowledge, must therefore be one of the highest priorities.

Of course, just as in any aspect of life there is no greater knowledge than that which comes from actual experience, so the practice of diplomacy and the lessons learned through years of training and service at home and abroad are by far superior to any theoretical understanding of international relations, no matter how well grounded.

The deficit of experience at the Ministry, coupled with what might be regarded as an excess of optimism currently in the public arena, might therefore explain some of the more hopeful utterances and ideas cropping up with regard to new initiatives to settle the border controversy with Venezuela.

In this respect, let us rewind to February this year, when President Hugo Ch