No one can depend on Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo to express himself in a statesmanlike fashion on public occasions. So there he was the week before last clumsily taking Trinidad to task for its economic failings. Speaking to an audience in Essequibo he said the Guyana government would invest some oil and gas resources into building infrastructure so that a non-oil and gas sector could generate jobs. If we don’t do that, when the oil money goes, he said, we would be poorer than many countries in the world.
So far so good, there is no problem with that. But he did not stop there. “Look at what is happening in Trinidad now,” he said; “Trinidad is falling apart and that is putting it mildly. No jobs, sustained periods of negative growth and can’t see the light of day for the near future.” Needless to say for the most part the Trinidadians did not take too kindly to his remarks, the Trinidad Guardian reporting that among other things Foreign Affairs Minister Amery Browne had addressed the matter with his Guyanese counterpart, Minister Hugh Todd.
Two of the heads of the twin-island’s Chambers of Industry and Commerce said that Mr Jagdeo’s comments did not represent a proper assessment of T&T’s current state. In addition, Mr Richie Sookhai of the Chaguanas body was reported as observing that at a time like this the nations of Caricom should be focusing on unity. “We have our challenges like many other countries,” he was quoted as saying, but “we are a resilient people and our sectors are picking up and moving once more.” He considered that it was unfortunate that “people at the helm” wanted to put further pressure on an already strained relationship between Trinidad and Guyana.
On the mainland there have been those who have rushed to the defence of the Vice President, not the least of them Foreign Secretary Robert Persaud, who characterized Mr Jagdeo’s remarks as “realistic”, and said he thought the two T&T private sector heads were being disingenuous. “What’s wrong with a leader making a factual observation about another country’s economic state, especially given the interdependence of our economies both at the bilateral and regional levels?” we quoted him as asking rhetorically.
The issue in all of this is not the accuracy or otherwise of the Vice President’s remarks, it is their propriety given the context in which they are being made. And that context relates to a contention between spokesmen in the two nations (although not yet the two governments per se) about the compatibility of Guyana’s local content law for the petroleum industry which was passed in December, and the Treaty of Chaguaramas which is the founding document of Caricom. For many citizens whose waking hours are spent wondering how to put food on the table, this is an altogether esoteric matter which they are not about to wrap their minds around. But it is nevertheless a critical one for the country.
It seems that the Caribbean Private Sector Organisation was the first to raise questions about whether this country’s local content legislation was consistent with its obligations under the Caricom Single Market and Economy, since it appeared to treat Caribbean nationals or their companies differently from Guyanese. Former Foreign Minister Carl Greenidge has said that
Articles 7, 31 (2a & 2b) & Article 37 of the Treaty of Chaguaramas in particular, do not allow this, except in clearly defined terms. We reported him as saying that Guyana was not in a position to ignore the rule just because it has now come up with a justification for doing so, or because it has only now begun the production of petroleum. Neither, he said, can alleged discrimination by Trinidad in the past provide grounds for disregarding it.
He was responding to Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Timothy Tucker, who had answered the Caribbean organisation in robust terms, and Mr Sanjeev Datadin, a government MP as well as a lawyer, who insisted that the law does not infringe the Treaty of Chaguaramas “because it does not prevent Caribbean citizens from entering the oil and gas sector … [but] merely concretizes the production sharing agreement.” Towards the end of a letter published in this newspaper, he wrote, “In my interactions, ‘on the ground’, and with those in Government there is a quiet but firm resolve on the issue. A resolve so strong that a treaty reservation/opt out or even a withdrawal are all possible. Make no mistake, Guyana will assert her sovereignty and right to choose in coming days and, likely, if necessary, adjust her treaty obligations to remove any possible conflict, real or perceived.”
This is extremist talk. Leave Caricom rather than amend a local law? Mr Datadin may be inexperienced as a politician, but surely it does not have to be explained to him why decoupling from the regional body, even as a last resort in this particular instance, is a nonsense. Mr Greenidge argued the case out in this regard, but it is astonishing that he should need to do so at all when the man involved is a parliamentarian sitting on the government benches no less. Mr Tucker, of course, is an entrepreneur, so perhaps there is a little more excuse for him not taking the larger issues and our commitment to the principles of international law into account. Businessmen all over the world have a tendency to use protectionism in trade matters as a default position.
Mr Greenidge, who has great experience in the field, argued the full case in relation to this particular trade dispute at some length, both in a feature and a letter to this newspaper. It would not be possible to summarize his points within this space; suffice it to say that in his view the positions of Messrs Tucker and Datadin had implications for this country’s national interest, its international standing and in relation to the support it could expect from the international community in its case against Venezuela.
He did indicate in his letter that if the government persisted in its present line the issue would almost certainly end up with the CCJ, involving great expense to the taxpayer. But he had some very rational alternatives which the administration could pursue, which would be far less costly as well as less time-consuming. One would be for the Caricom heads to trigger the Good Offices Dispute Settlement Mechanism, establish a Working Group of Heads of Government to consider the matter, or request an Advisory Opinion from the CCJ.
If Mr Greenidge was putting forward rational approaches to seeking a solution to a dispute, Vice President Jagdeo was busy stoking fires. He embarked on a second diatribe which went beyond echoing what he had expressed the first time around. He repeated his views on Trinidad “falling apart”, but then he strayed into other areas which have been a source of resentments in the past. He said if a survey were conducted to ask Guyanese in which airport “they are treated worst in the world, the answer will be a resounding Trinidad and Tobago. This comes across for everybody.”
He clearly hasn’t heard about the infamous bench at Grantley Adams at one period, and since he must have been sweeping through the VIP lounge at the CJIA for many decades, he may not be too familiar with the experiences of our own citizens at the hands of local immigration at one point or another either. In any case, exactly what complaints about airport treatment had to do with the state of the T&T economy is something of a mystery.
Be that as it may, this time his words clearly came in the context of the dispute relating to the local content legislation. While offering the assurance that Guyana would uphold its treaty obligation, he then by implication went on to contradict that position by saying that this country would not be bullied into allowing its people to be marginalized here.
“One thing that won’t happen is that we won’t be bullied,” he declared emphatically. Expanding on his theme, he was quoted as saying, “But somehow they believe they have a god-given right to displace Guyanese too in our own country from our own resources and we are not going to stand by, in the PPP, and allow that to happen. We are not going to. I don’t care who cusses me… I know we won’t discriminate against Trinidad and Tobago.” Residents in our sister territory must be wondering who will be doing the bullying here.
But Mr Jagdeo hadn’t finished: “Sometimes in our own country we are treated like second-class citizens. Their attitude has to change in regards to Guyanese. We have suffered a long time in regards to our dignity.” While it is true that in the hard years in this country the Trinidadians were hardly paragons of virtue in relation to the treatment of Guyanese, surely the Vice President is not proposing that Guyanese should take their retribution now that the opportunity is open to them?
Introducing a divine element into his peroration, he expressed the hope that God would bless the people who treated Guyanese well and “punish those [who] treated us badly.” One wonders what the Trinidadians made of that.
Finally, he also reflected on the myriad criticisms which might be directed at him for standing up for his people, by saying that he doesn’t “lose much sleep once Guyanese are moving forward.” What a pity. If he lost more sleep he might have more time to reflect on the meaning and consequences of his public pronouncements and whether they really help to move Guyanese forward.
