PPPC Govt. should include an Opposition member as part of St. Vincent delegation

Dec 14, 2023 Letters

Dear Editor,

Our leaders must be shrewd enough to recognize “a pappy show” when they are presented with one. Such is the nature of the invitation extended by the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to our own President to attend a meeting with President Maduro this coming Thursday.

Like many, I have serious misgivings about the benefits of such a meeting. High level meetings of this sort must have a clearly defined agenda which would have been informed by the work of technocrats on both sides and not seemingly rushed as would appear to be the case in this instance. This is certainly not the time to “gaff” and for hugging up comrades.

This is time for serious business with the leader of one of the world’s largest countries in attendance and who in my estimation and out of deference, should be chairing the meeting. We need a chairman who can focus; not prone to obtuse verbiage; who can keep the discussions within required guardrails and who can exercise leverage or influence to ensure a successful outcome to the meeting. In my humble opinion, Prime Minister Gonsalves does not sit well within those parameters. Additionally, Dr. Gonsalves’ role in this meeting raises serious issues of conflict of interest. It is an open secret that SVG and Dominica are heavily dependent and beholden to Venezuela for financial and economic support under the Petro Caribe agreement. As such, they are at best weak interlocutors coming from a position of strong dependency and are therefore in no position to exercise any form of suasion over Venezuela. Additionally, they might not want to support positions that they might view as being adversarial to their own interests.

One notes the commendable as well as tactical offer of support by Sir Shridath in his desire to see that the discussions are kept in check, and one hopes that his offer would be taken up. I do not, however, accept his charitable attempt in praising CARICOM for its role on this border issue. Sir Shridath has always been the doyen of our diplomats and like us, he would have noticed the many iterations of CARICOM’s statement of support for Guyana before a final one was found to be strong enough and acceptable. Even to the untrained diplomatic eye, this would clearly suggest that there was strong division within CARICOM on the wording of the statement, perhaps between current and prospective PetroCaribe beneficiaries and the rest of the community. It is further instructive to see public statements of support coming from Trinidad & Tobago, the Bahamas, Jamaica and Belize, with these countries clearly demonstrating that they do not intend to hide behind the collective statements of CARICOM.

I would, therefore, hope that Guyana’s presence at Thursday’s meeting would be out of respect to President Lula who has graciously agreed to attend and not out of pandering to the idle fancies or acts of self-aggrandizement of others wishing to achieve great and monumental things. In essence, this meeting must not be treated like a “Pappy show”!!

Finally, I urge in the interest of transparency and openness that the Government includes a representative of the Opposition to be part of its delegation. This would clearly demonstrate to all participating that we are totally united as a country on this issue.

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