Whether it is because of the revelations emerging from a federal courtroom in Brooklyn, or whether it is because of the other innumerable problems which beset him, President Jagdeo does not appear to be hanging around the country much these days. After discharging his Caricom duties in Jamaica and elsewhere, and putting in an appearance at the Unasur summit in Ecuador, he is now off to Iran it seems. Exactly what the purpose of his visit there is was not made altogether clear; our report on Thursday was based not on a release from the normally garrulous GINA, but from the Iranian News Agency. “Soon we will get familiar with the capabilities and capacities of the Islamic Republic of Iran during a visit to that country,” the agency reported the President as saying. No doubt. But still, exactly why is the head of state going to Tehran?
It is not as if genuine democracies elsewhere in the world don’t have justified concerns about the validity of the Iranian election results, and more especially, about the mass arrests of peaceful protestors, the deaths of some of their leaders in custody, the credible allegations of the use of torture to extract confessions from them, and the extraordinary ‘show’ trials. So why is the Government of Guyana in such a hurry to give the appearance of embracing all this, and in the process doing damage to its supposed democratic credentials which it is so fond of flaunting?
Where the Iranian election itself is concerned, Mr Ramotar, speaking for the PPP presumably, wrote a strangely ambiguous piece in the Weekend Mirror a few weeks ago, in which he eventually argued himself into accepting the improbable margin of Mr Ahmadinejad’s win. So, since the ruling party has no question buzzing around its collective head about the fairness of the Iranian poll, and President Jagdeo is not disposed to harbour unease about its aftermath, are we to assume that Guyana is in the process of realigning itself with an entirely different constellation of nations from the traditional ones? Do we have a new foreign policy that the public knows nothing about?
We have, of course, been a member of the Organisation of The Islamic Conference (OIC) since 1998, which as its name suggests, is a kind of Commonwealth of the Islamic world. Exactly what we are doing in that grouping has never been satisfactorily explained, since Guyana is not an Islamic state; on the contrary, it is of necessity a secular one because this is a multi-faith society. We should not be a part of any international organization which takes as its starting perspective a religious point of view, whether that religion be Islam, Christianity, Hinduism or anything else, and it is odd that a party which declared itself Marxist-Leninist in 1969 should be the one to commit this country to the OIC.
When the decision was taken to join OIC, it may conceivably have been intended as a sop to the local Muslim vote, although more likely it had to do with the hope of tapping funding sources in oil-rich states. There are many who will immediately come to the conclusion that the trip to Tehran too has more to do with the begging bowl circuit than anything else, although it has yet to be determined whether Iran made the overture, or whether it was President Jagdeo. Whichever is the case, it is still reasonable to conclude that the latter will be hoping for funding in some shape or form, although that conceivably might not be the only motivation behind the trip.
For Tehran’s part, it has to be observed that Iran has become very active in South America in recent years, no doubt with a view to taking on Washington in its own hemisphere, and has been accused of funding organizations such as Hizbollah, which are said to have a presence on the continent. One imagines, therefore, that it would not be averse to adding Guyana to its list of hemispheric ‘friends.’ Perhaps it might be said in passing, Iran has had very tenuous connections with this country before at an unofficial level; one of its missionaries was murdered here under obscure circumstances, and while there has never been even a hint that Tehran had any association with the activities of Guyanese charged in the US with plotting to plant explosives at a NY airport, it would not have escaped American notice that one of them received religious training in Iran.
As is no secret, Iran is already involved in joint projects to the west of us. It should be noted that President Chávez’s obsession is with the United States, and he has made a point of forging close alliances with countries which have a cool or hostile relationship with Washington, and which, incidentally, do not come top of the world’s democratic league tables. Cuba, Ecuador and Bolivia aside, Iran is probably his number one ally, in addition to which there are also states like Russia (from which Caracas obtains sophisticated military hardware for which it has no obvious use), and Belorussia. The question should be asked, therefore, as to whether imperceptibly we are moving into Miraflores’ orbit, and viewing the world through that particular prism. If so, the question would have to be, what would there be to gain from it?
Of course, Mr Chávez has obtained a stranglehold on the region through PetroCaribe, and it is possible that at some stage he will use it to draw more Caricom countries into Alba, the organization which he created and which is intended to function as the integration instrument of South America to confront the United States. Prior to the Unasur summit he sent a letter to the members, pressing on them in flowery language the vision of Bolivarian integration. As it is, he has announced new payment terms for PetroCaribe countries, which small Caricom states will have difficulty meeting. Could it be that those in Alba will get special consideration, which those outside it may not? On Friday, we carried a Reuters’ report that Antigua (an Alba member) was to be given $50M in financial assistance from Venezuela.
Today we have published a report from Dominican News Online as saying that Guyana and Belize would struggle to make the new PetroCaribe payments. Could it be – and this is purely a hypothesis – that Caracas has intervened with Iran to give us assistance, and if so, what will the price be? One can only wonder why, when President Jagdeo was reported as saying that the new PetroCaribe arrangements would be difficult for Caricom states to meet, he had nothing to say about how they would affect Guyana specifically. It is true that only about half of our fuel is supplied under PetroCaribe, but that is no reason for officials to stay silent on the matter, more especially since a Dominican news outlet has rightly or wrongly attributed a comment to Guyana.
Last month without any preliminary notice to the nation, Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett took off on a one-day excursion to Caracas, where, we were told subsequently, she discussed the resuscitation of the Good Offices process, the construction of a road link to Guyana from Caracas and a gas pipeline from Venezuela through this country to Suriname, among other projects. We have commented editorially on the dangers of the road link and the gas pipeline before, and will not elaborate here, but why has Mr Chávez become interested in the Good Officer process now, when he hasn’t been bothered about it for years? Are there new subterranean rumblings in that department, about which the public knows nothing?
If it is that President Jagdeo is just flying his own kite where Iran is concerned, at least he should advise the nation of his thinking. And alternatively, if it is that we are moving into a new international orbit for some reason, he should advise the nation of that too. And just what is the position with PetroCaribe, and are we now accepting the Venezuelan view of hemispheric affairs?
In fact, just what is the government’s foreign policy?
