At the end of last month President Irfaan Ali addressed the nation on a subject which was not at the forefront of citizens’ minds given the questions swirling around the Dharamlall case. Perhaps misjudging the public mood he chose to treat his listeners to a disquisition of almost 25 minutes in length on the programmes that had been implemented and the relationships he had forged during his engagements with more than 60 world leaders. As he had done once before he emphasised how hard he worked when he left this country to attend meetings – “round-the-clock work” was how he described it – insisting that gains in the foreign policy field did not come by accident.
If his listeners were impressed by his assurances they gave no subsequent indication of it, but then in any case no one imagines that anything can be accomplished in the diplomatic field without hard work; it is the least to be expected of anyone in the President’s position. While he gave the impression of being impervious to the publicly expressed concerns about the handling of the Dharamlall matter, he seemed a great deal less so by opposition questions asked in Parliament about his government’s foreign policy work. He said he wanted to frontally address those questions and expressed himself disgusted that anyone did not recognise “the gains that we are making.”
The President did not specify the questions he was addressing; at best these could only be inferred, but in any case a laundry list of agreements with major leaders and investors on hydropower, agrochemicals, fertilizers and cement, a list which is presumably not exhaustive, certainly does not cover the many facets of foreign policy work. Strong bilateral relations across the globe, Mr Ali said, were a part of ensuring that Guyana’s position was understood and that support for Guyana would be “overwhelming.” In a complicated world where ideas differ radically about what shape the international order should take, and there is a divergence of views on a range of global topics, it can only be remarked he is being unduly simplistic.
A year ago, for example, he said that Guyana’s relationship with China was built on Beijing’s support for this country’s development goals and where common values were realised. Guyanese must be pondering what common values these are, since China does not espouse democracy or the rule of law in any liberal sense. And as for its concept of how the international order should function, that is in direct conflict with how the western democracies see it as operating. Yet last year too he talked at the same time of “encouraging the US to become more aggressive and to take more strategic space, a place in this space and the region.”
The President made reference to the engagements with Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda, among others, as well as with India. In the latter country the government had met with more than 500 private sector investors, and had received commitments for help in Guyana’s development in the form of, “More scholarships, technical assistance, approval of US$100 million for military at low interest, [and] commitment to finance capital projects …” he said.
While all this is commendable, why, it has to be asked, has Guyana not yet appointed a High Commissioner there to replace Mr Charrandass Persaud, who certainly did this nation no credit. Earlier this year it was reported that Mr Kowlessar had been tipped for the post, but since then nothing seems to have happened. Since India is a country with which Guyana has important relations, why has the government not considered it essential to fill the post in New Delhi?
At what level in the High Commission are the negotiations on the details of various arrangements being conducted? Negotiating with the Indian authorities cannot be done below the level of High Commissioner without insulting the host nation. Or is it that everything is being carried out from Georgetown? If so, that would be a serious failure in the conduct of foreign affairs.
President Ali certainly had something to say about the Middle East, where he asserted that Guyana had established a very “important and critical footprint.” The commitments and agreements there, he went on to state, had been opened up as a result of a “new strong bilateral cooperation and engagement.” In May this year Guyana opened an embassy in Qatar for the first time in the presence of Mr Ali and a delegation which included Finance Minister Ashni Singh. Cuba and the Dominican Republic are the only other Caribbean nations to have embassies there. The new ambassador is Mr Safraaz Ahmad Shadood.
While we are opening new embassies and appointing new ambassadors, what about long established missions which are much closer to home like Venezuela and Brazil? Surely these neighbours above all others (we do have an ambassador in Suriname) should be top of the list for ambassadorial appointments. It hardly needs emphasizing that it is necessary to keep in touch with what is happening in Venezuela, while Brazil is a potential partner in a gas pipeline and electricity generation project which would interconnect the power systems of that country as well as Guyana and Suriname, and, potentially, French Guiana.
The President did refer in his address to “creating a framework for a regional energy hub” not being a simple task, but one would have thought that before he even embarked on that project he would have ensured that the structures for representation in all the countries involved were in place. There is too the matter of the road to Brazil and the deep water harbour.
Previous PPP/C governments have all been very casual about ambassadorial appointments in the past, either leaving posts vacant for a long time, or else treating them as rewards for services rendered to the party. They have never taken a professional approach to the issue, and if the President has all these ambitions, he needs to change his stance because such appointments lie solely in his hands.
While he spoke about forests and climate change, and food security, among other things, he was not reported as adverting to our territorial integrity, which has always been a foundation stone of our foreign policy. Our controversy with Venezuela, of course, is currently being heard in The Hague, but nothing was said about Suriname and the failure to adhere to fishing agreements, or the public outcry in Paramaribo when this country evicted Brazilian miners from the New River Triangle. Mention of the underlying tension over border issues, of course, would eclipse the positives such as the energy hub or the Corentyne bridge.
In February of this year President Ali told the GDF that the government was working on promoting “defence diplomacy” as a feature of Guyana’s foreign policy. Exactly what was meant by this was not made clear, unless it simply referred to using diplomacy as the first line of defence against those who had border claims in relation to our territory. If so, it is nothing new; it has always been part of this country’s foreign policy. If not, then perhaps it needs some explanation. Certainly that was not forthcoming in the President’s address.
In terms of development contracts the government does have things to its credit, but a catalogue of investments is no substitute for a structured, coherent foreign policy; investments and development contracts are secured within the context of a policy. President Ali needs a foreign affairs ministry staffed with personnel of merit who can help him with a strategy blueprint and programme, and overseas missions which are also fully staffed with qualified people. And as for leading the globe in various areas as he claimed, that will be meaningless unless this country has the structures in place to deliver.
