President Irfaan Ali didn’t have a great deal to say in his New Year message to Guyanese, but then that was probably the most prudent approach he could have adopted. After all, what could he say at the end of an unusually difficult twelve months, other than designate 2021 the ‘year of recovery’? He did make reference to what had been achieved, although considering his administration has only been in office for five months, no one could reasonably expect anything dramatic. But the one thing he could have celebrated was absent from his address, and that was a reference to the decision of the International Court of Justice on December 18, that it had jurisdiction to hear Guyana’s case seeking validation of the 1899 arbitral award.
This award established our boundary with Venezuela, which after the passage of 63 years was challenged by our neighbour to the west at the United Nations. Since then, Caracas has held doggedly to the position that in 1899 it was despoiled of all territory west of the Essequibo River, and in pursuit of its misplaced irridentist ambitions has stymied development in the area, among many other things.
The December 18 decision was a huge advance in the search for the almost six decades’ solution to the controversy, while the approach to the World Court had the unique advantage of being supported by both sides of the aisle. In fact, it was a PPP/C government which had first proposed recourse to the ICJ. Then Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett mentioned it at her end-of-year press conference in December 2014, revealing for the first time to the public the administration’s new thinking on the matter. She had already written her Venezuelan counterpart on the 2nd of that month, indicating the Guyana government was “reviewing the other options under Article 33 of the United Nations Charter, as provided for by the 1966 Geneva Agreement, that could serve to bring to an end the controversy.”
If the PPP/C government had made the first move to go to the ICJ, it was the Coalition government which converted that into reality. While President Donald Ramotar had nothing to say about it in his New Year address of January 2015, President David Granger did take up the matter in his first New Year speech in January of the following year. “We have seen the clearest sign, also, that the unlawful and unreasonable claims to our country’s territory will be set on a definite course for settlement at the end of this New Year,” he assured his listeners. It took rather longer to reach the Hague than his timeline suggested, but never mind, we are there.
Changes of government, outlook and international circumstances have meant that it is not until more recent times that there was unanimity – or even, perhaps, clarity − on what the best mode of proceeding was, or that it could reasonably be expected following the Geneva Agreement in 1966, that a UN Secretary General would be prepared to refer the issue to the World Court.
A Labour government came into office in London in 1964, and by 1965, was of the opinion for a variety of reasons that the matter should be taken to the ICJ, given that independence for the then British Guiana was in the offing. This was before Geneva, of course, and it would have required Venezuela’s concurrence, although even if that country didn’t agree, it would make it more difficult for her to exert pressure on us, so the argument ran.
Premier Burnham was not so confident about this line of thinking. He was afraid of putting at risk the territory of the country before a court whose judges at the time might be under great political pressure. He thought that a young, independent Guyana would find more friends at the UN on the boundary matter than would Venezuela, and in any case, if pressure of one kind or another became intolerable, recourse could always be had to the ICJ at that point. There was also a further unease in Guyanese circles about a possible legal tactic by Caracas in relation to the court, although the British lawyers were not persuaded.
In the end, Britain’s solution to giving newly independent Guyana some cover, especially from the possibility of Venezuelan adventurism, was the Geneva Agreement of February 17, 1966. Geneva came in the wake of a meeting in London on December 9 and 10, 1965, between the British, Venezuelans and Guyanese, that produced no retreat on the part of Caracas. Geneva has now proved its worth in view of the ICJ judgement of last December which found that both Guyana and Venezuela had conferred authority on the UN Secretary General under Article IV of that treaty to choose a means of settlement under Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations.
Before we reached this point, however, as mentioned earlier, there were a number of stages to negotiate over a period of many decades. To begin with, it might be noted that the PPP of the time as well as others were not persuaded of the wisdom of Geneva, and they suspected Burnham’s motives. Much later, as is known, they did not insist on adhering to that less than sanguine view of the Agreement, and began to appreciate its advantages.
After Geneva was signed, the first attempt at a resolution was the Mixed Commission, established under Articles I and II of Geneva, and made up of representatives from both nations. It sat between 1966 and 1970 and not unexpectedly, achieved nothing. This was followed by a period of quiescence, in so far as a moratorium was placed on the dispute settlement process for twelve years. It was known as the Protocol of Port of Spain, and was due to come to an end in 1982. President Burnham was optimistic that it would be renewed, and from that one can infer, perhaps, that he thought this could evolve into an extended process whereby the controversy maybe would in due course evaporate.
If so, he was to be rudely disappointed. Flying to Caracas in 1981, he met a very hostile President Herrera Campins, who told him in no uncertain terms the Protocol would not be given another lease of life. Arguably Burnham’s best press conference at any time was given at Maiquetía Airport before he left, when he held at bay a crowd of angry, arrogant Venezuelan reporters who did not anticipate his wide-ranging grasp of the issues or the sophistication of his responses. Under the Copei government, the pressure on Guyana was intense, and it is presumably at some point during this period that he decided that the ICJ might be the recommended route to a resolution. After the expiry of the Protocol, and the failure of the two sides to reach agreement on a means of settlement, the controversy was referred to Secretary General of the United Nations Pérez de Cuéllar, who appointed Mr Diego Cordovez to ascertain the positions of Venezuela and Guyana on the choice of a means of settlement.
That too produced nothing substantial, and in 1990, the Secretary General initiated the Good Officer process. It must be said that this seems to have happened after President Hoyte and President Pérez of Venezuela had met in Puerto Ordaz and had agreed on this avenue, although whether either of them expected it to produce results, rather than provide space for them to pursue relations in other areas is not known. Unlike Burnham in the first half of the eighties, Hoyte dealt with an AD government in Caracas, which was somewhat less hard-line than Copei, and which had argued at an earlier stage not for the whole territory, but for land west of the Moruka River, or subsequently even a concessionary strip.
When the PPP/C government came to office in 1992, it appeared to take the view, following Dr Jagan’s conviction, that the controversy was a product of the Cold War, and that now he was in government with US backing, it might be added, the matter would fizzle out. It was not to be; in the intervening decades the issue had taken on a life of its own, as the PPP/C was to discover. Nevertheless, the Good Officer process limped on, first under Mr Alister McIntyre (1990-1999), then Mr Oliver Jackman (1999-2007) and finally, Mr Norman Girvan, who was appointed in 2010, but died four years later.
During this period, President Hugo Chávez came to power in Miraflores, and eventually – although not initially – adopted a much softer line on the boundary, indicating he would not oppose any project in Essequibo which had the development of the people in mind. Echoing Fidel Castro of Cuba, he deemed the controversy a Cold War issue. However, he made clear he would not look with equanimity on any project involving a multinational, for instance. Succeeded by Nicolás Maduro, the impression was conveyed on a brief trip to Georgetown that he might adopt a similar line, but that all changed dramatically. The cause of the change was the issuing of oil blocks in our maritime zone and the appearance of oil exploration vessels, not to mention the prospect of drilling as well. It produced a very hostile reaction from the Venezuelan government which included a military expression, and is presumably what induced the Ramotar administration to cast around for a more long-term solution to the controversy.
It has to be acknowledged that in 2015 not everyone in the PPP/C government seemed to endorse the notion of a juridical settlement. Former President Bharrat Jagdeo, for example, questioned whether this option was available at all, and if it was, whether it represented the best option. He was quickly answered by former Facilitator in the good offices process, Mr Ralph Ramkarran, where the first of these was concerned, and last December’s ruling at the ICJ would seem to dispel his fears about the second. There is no reason to believe he does not support the process at this point.
So we are now in a rather unusual position in this country: there is no disagreement within the parties or between them on the matter of referring the controversy to the ICJ. It has everyone’s support. Where our territorial integrity is concerned, there really is unity, something which is in short supply in every other department of our lives. Surely, on these grounds alone, it would have been worth President Ali’s while to salute the decision of the ICJ in his address.
Ah well, perhaps he can drink a quiet toast to it in the privacy of State House.
