Mr Bharrat Jagdeo is very much a political being and his comments on many subjects, therefore, should be placed within a political context. Thus when earlier last year he blamed the current government for the loss of the Venezuelan rice market, it was hardly a surprise to anyone. In June last year, government stopped the Venezuelan state-owned airline Conviasa from flying here because they had not put up the required bond and had owed money to the CJIA and the Civil Aviation Authority. Mr Jagdeo’s eccentric slant on this matter was: “You cannot move a border issue to economic sanctions. We threw the first stone of economic sanctions when we caused the airline to go back claiming that they had not put up the bond of US$200,000. And that bond… we had put in place for chartered flights and not scheduled carriers, so that was the first stone.”
It seems to have escaped him that all the stones have been lobbed by Venezuela so far, in addition to which – and this may have been the real reason for his statements – both Minister of Finance Winston Jordan and Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo had said that the former administration had been advised by the Venezuelan authorities in 2014 that the rice deal was to be terminated. The Prime Minister in fact speculated whether the silence of the Ramotar administration during its period of office had not been inspired by motives of “narrow politicking,” given that former Minister of Agriculture Leslie Ramsammy, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett and former Guyana Ambassador to Caracas Geoffrey Da Silva had all been advised the arrangement would end in November of 2015.
And that, of course, was a long time before the Conviasa issue ever arose.
Mr Jagdeo’s approach to solving the problem was for Presidents David Granger and Nicolás Maduro to hold talks to help ease tensions and restore trade, more particularly Guyana’s sale of rice and paddy to our western neighbour. This was said before Mr Granger went to the UN General Assembly in September, where he did meet Mr Maduro under the auspices of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Guyana’s rice, however, was not on the agenda of the talks.
In any case, as Mr Jagdeo well knows, Suriname and Uruguay have supplanted Guyana as rice suppliers to Venezuela, and one might have thought that the former head of state would have picked up on the significance of this as it relates to the first-named country. Surely he does not believe we will be able to replace Suriname, when it has made common cause with Caracas in the past, and is raising its claim to our New River Triangle again? In short, the realistic position is we are not going to recover the Venezuelan market in a hurry for political reasons.
Well, if Mr Jagdeo expressed an eccentric viewpoint on the issue, unusually last week he was exceeded by Dr Odeen Ishmael, Guyana’s former ambassador to Venezuela. In the course of an analysis which was published by two newspapers on the situation in the neighbouring state now that the combined opposition has secured a majority in the National Assembly, he expressed the view that the Guyana government should approach the opposition legislators. The idea would be, he argued, to hear their opinion on how the border controversy should be resolved, as well as their thoughts on issues “relating to stalled cooperation programmes and bilateral trade, in particular the purchase of Guyana’s rice.”
Leaving aside for the moment, the unacceptable risks of approaching the combined opposition (generally referred to by its acronym MUD) on any subject at a time like this, one might have thought that Dr Ishmael, of all people, would have had a clear understanding that trade and cooperation agreements of whatever character, come within the context of the spurious Venezuelan claim, and will inevitably be affected by how Caracas is pursuing that claim at any given time. Considering that Guyana is the one deriving the benefits in these agreements – approximately $3,000 a bag in the case of rice, which is well above the world market price – Venezuela can pull the plug on them any time it wants to exert pressure on this country.
Mr Jagdeo has gone on record as saying that the border controversy should be kept separate from trade matters, and clearly by implication, Dr Ishmael hews to this line too. The problem is the power does not lie in Georgetown’s hands to keep the issues separate; only Venezuela can do that, because it is the one making the claim against us (we do not claim Venezuelan territory), and since it derives no particular advantage from trade with us, it can use any deals that are made as a lever. As for our government, we should not be seen to be begging.
In any case, approaching MUD about rice or the border controversy is not a recommended way to proceed at this point in time, one would have thought. No one is sure what is going to happen in Venezuela this year, and whether President Maduro and his party will work with a MUD dominated National Assembly; all that can be said is that the prognostications are not good. The last thing that we should want at this stage is to be accused of interfering in internal Venezuelan politics. Dr Ishmael gave what he called a “precedent” for this approach, by citing Dr Cheddi Jagan’s contacts with all Venezuelan politicians in 1958. Suffice it to say, it was not a true analogy and as such, therefore, was not a precedent.
While as Dr Ishmael said, there are no doubt nuances in the views of the various members of MUD in relation to Guyana, where the larger matter of the claim is concerned, there is unanimity. As has been observed before by various writers, Venezuela does not want a resolution of the border controversy. By keeping Guyana weak and underdeveloped, and by applying direct pressure periodically, our neighbour hopes to extract a major concession from us. Caracas has blocked all kinds of projects in Essequibo over the years, and particularly doesn’t want us to have oil because it would give us a measure of independence as well as some insulation from its coercive tactics.
This has been going on now for fifty years, and it is to the credit of a succession of governments on both sides of the divide in this country, that they have never given way. In the circumstances, Miraflores couldn’t give two sow’s whiskers for our rice, let alone our rice farmers and millers; it is simply a question of how our rice might serve their interest at any given point.
It cannot be denied that the loss of the Venezuelan market is a blow, because we were paid so well, albeit through a barter arrangement. Rice production last year soared to an all-time high, but there was no word on where the alternative markets were to come from. In our editorial of Monday, November 2, 2015 it was pointed out that neither the Guyana Rice Development Board Chairman, Mr Housty, nor its head Mr Hassan, had “provided any useful information on the sourcing of markets and what is being done to find more.” It might be added that two months later they still have not done so.
At an earlier stage various government spokesmen had intimated that the onus was not on government to find markets; however, it is the job of a government to act as a facilitator for business, more particularly in circumstances where rice is such a critical export and such a large segment of the population relies on it directly or indirectly for a living. Admittedly, it is not an easy task; even Mr Jagdeo recognized that when he spoke to the rice farmers in April last year. “The government has huge problems in getting markets to sell the large volume of rice produced,” he was quoted as saying then.
It is no longer the job of the PPP/C to find rice markets, although since they have great experience in the industry they are in a good position to monitor what the government is doing – or as far as one can see, not doing, in this case. What they themselves should not be doing, however, is misleading the rice farmers and millers about a return to the Venezuelan market, and blaming the government for its loss. While the decision, it appears, was taken while their government was in office, they too are not to blame; it all goes back to Venezuela’s wearisome machinations.
