Last week President Ali discovered what his predecessors before him always knew: there is nothing like an official visit abroad to boost morale, massage the ego and provide a feel-good infusion for the spirit. Far removed from the grubby contentiousness of Guyanese politics he could sit back free from care while Ms Sheila Jackson Lee of the Black Caucus in the US Congress lauded him for his visionary leadership and his “outstanding character as a leader.” He certainly wouldn’t hear anything as fulsome in GT, even from his own party.
The President had gone to Washington in the company of Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, Foreign Minister Hugh Todd, Foreign Secretary Robert Persaud and Ambassador Sam Hinds to meet with US officials. His encounter with several members of the Congressional Black Caucus was probably the most immediately rewarding from his point of view especially after he was presented with the Certificate of Congressional Recognition by Congresswoman Lee. She told him: “[Y]ou are steadfast in your commitment to the wellbeing and the future of the Guyanese people, and … you are going to help them overcome struggles that they may not foresee…”
The opposition here would be a good deal less sanguine about him helping them to overcome unforeseen struggles let alone that he represented a “promise of hope for the Guyanese people,” but be that as it may, the members of the US executive for their part seemed to have their own concerns, although they were infinitely more cautious in their phraseology. Cushioned as it was with diplomatic wadding it nevertheless clearly conveyed the areas where they thought that work on the part of the government here was still needed.
It is not as if what Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Kamala Harris had to say to President Ali and his contingent had not been said before by US officials, it is just that they had not heard it at such a high level before.
The US Secretary of State was reported in a tweet as talking of Guyana as a “key partner” in the work “to bolster food and energy security, promote shared prosperity and inclusive growth, strengthen transparency, and safeguard the environment”. In her call with President Ali, the US Vice President spoke of inclusive democracy, economic development, and security for all Guyanese, while on Anti-Corruption Day in December last year Ambassador Sarah-Ann Lynch had said that the United States anticipated anti-corruption initiatives from Guyana. She went on to remark that a “strong” stance would demonstrate the government’s commitment to transparent institutions which utilized the country’s resources to the long-term benefit of all Guyanese.
At an earlier stage in October last year the Acting Director of the Office of Caribbean Affairs in the State Department, Mr Pedro Martin, had called on Guyana at a conference to have “productive, inclusive dialogue” on the issues of the local content policy and the Natural Resource Fund. This, it was believed, could engender opportunities for all Guyanese.
So what it comes down to is an emphasis on inclusivity and transparency, with Secretary of State Blinken adding environmental concerns, presumably also in relation to oil developments which local activists have expressed concerns about. The question is one of whether the Guyana government is listening, and whether it is really prepared to do what is necessary to ensure that there is greater inclusivity and transparency so everyone benefits from the oil bonanza. The evidence to date is that it is not; that it is still tethered to political obsessions from decades ago, and that it is still convinced that it is the ‘vanguard party’ which has all the truths at its disposal. From the Natural Resource Fund Bill which it arbitrarily refused to send to Select Committee for consideration, to its dismissal of professionals like Dr Adams of the EPA who would stand up to it, to its refusal to meet the Opposition Leader on key appointments, particularly the two highest judicial officers, and to its disparagement of civil society groups it shows in many ways that it is playing deaf to US concerns.
The United States knows as well as anyone that this society is inherently unstable, with its ethno-political divide as discernable as ever. Yet for some reason the government seems strangely insensitive to the potential dangers of a situation where there is no inclusivity and no transparency. Perhaps it feels a new confidence given the nation’s burgeoning economic situation.
It is true that the oil finds have catapulted Guyana into a different international league, and the government is benefiting from that. The new rapprochement with Washington is not entirely unrelated to the fact that it is America’s largest oil company which is leading the industry locally, giving the US a commercial interest it didn’t have before. The importance of oil here is enhanced by the war in Ukraine, while Washington also recognises the potential of this country to provide food security for the region. On its side the government does not forget the role that the American government played here in ensuring the results of the 2020 election were observed.
In a general sense Washington’s renewed interest in South America and the Caribbean and by extension, Guyana, owes more than a little to the need to try and neutralise the influence of the Chinese, who have been employing soft power all over the world, not least in South America and our region. To the best of anyone’s public knowledge, the extent of Chinese influence and investment was not raised directly by US officials, but at a forum where President Ali was guest speaker he did answer a query in relation to it.
“How does Guyana think about its relationship with mainland China?” was one of the questions put to him at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to which he responded, “Our relationship is based on the country’s ability to move its development path forward. It is based on ensuring respect for fundamental principles, ensuring that we support common values … They have supported the development path of many countries, have supported the development path of Guyana; they’ve invested in different projects over the years as [has] the United States and we’ll be encouraging the US to become more aggressive and to take more strategic space, a place in this space and the region.”
This was a strange response considering that the common values of western democracies are quite alien to China, which also appears to be bent on reforming the international system. Nowadays, for example, its contracts tend to require that in instances where arbitration is required, this has to be done by some Chinese judicial authority, not an international arbitral tribunal. Beijing is concerned about its own strategic and economic interests, not that of the state in which it has invested.
Whatever was meant too by President Ali’s reference to ‘fundamental principles’ and China, it can be stated with some confidence that these do not relate to the rule of law and liberal democracy. Beijing would have been unconcerned about the attempt to hijack democracy here in 2020, for example, provided that its economic interests were preserved. Whether the audience was aware of the VICE News allegations at the time the question was asked was not clear from the reports.
The President did go on to say that before the Summit of the Americas there was a perception in the Caricom region that there had been neglect on the part of the US. Following the summit, he went on to observe, there had been an “enormous move to rectify this,” and he made reference to the $2 billion Memorandum of Understanding in financing with the United State EXIM bank. It seemed to suggest that President Ali was pleased about the return of the Americans, although given the level of Chinese investment in Guyana the government would not be abandoning its eastern partner. In addition, as mentioned earlier the Chinese do not interfere with internal arrangements.
Perhaps ideally President Ali and the PPP would like partly (not totally) to operate more in the mode of President Xi Jinping when in office, but would still want free and fair elections, unlike him. For the US, however, democracy is more than free and fair elections, and among various other things, some of which we do have in place, it would in our context require inclusivity and transparency. In theory the ruling party no doubt does want the benefits of oil to improve the lot of everyone in the society; it is just that they resist the measures necessary to achieve that.
