On May 2nd, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Venezuela must not hold elections in Essequibo, as it has committed to doing on the 25th of May, the day before the celebration of the 59th anniversary of Guyana’s independence. The significance is inescapable. Venezuela will ignore the decision of the Court. However, it does not have the ability to hold credible elections in the Essequibo. This is in Guyana’s sovereign territory. It will therefore have to engage in some kind of political legerdemain to have a Governor of Essequibo and 8 Deputies elected to represent the region in Venezuela’s National Assembly. Predictably, one of these Deputies or the Governor himself will call for the independence or an autonomous status for the Essequibo. Geopolitics, with all of its complexities, will then be at our doorstep.
At bottom the attempt to hold elections in the Essequibo is a clumsy effort to ratchet up psychological pressure on Guyana. It is also an effort to rally a fractured nation now racked by serious and horrendous economic and social problems. The proposed elections are intended to complement the physical measures already taken, especially over the last three years, to further Venezuela’s claim to the Essequibo. Though clumsily executed, Caracas is signaling by holding these elections the extent to which it is prepared to go bolster its political and geopolitical position in Latin American and the Caribbean region.
I want to suggest with the chimerical proposal to hold elections in the Essequibo, Guyana must pay greater attention to Caracas’s geopolitical aims without discounting focus on the diplomatic and political. The decisions of the ICJ and the opposition of the international community will clearly not stop Caracas from pursuing its longstanding aim of annexing the Essequibo. Eric Williams, the former Prime Minster of Trinidad and Tobago and an Historian of note, had warned us as early as 1976, in an address to his Party, the PNM, of the dangers of Venezuelan expansion in the Caribbean region, an expansion which will have implications for the Caribbean Community as a whole. The loss of Essequibo will diminish the geographical area of the Community itself.
The Essequibo represents 60% of Guyana’s territory. It is also located along our border with Venezuela and is in proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. Venezuelan leaders from Carlos Andres Peres to Hugo Chavez have expressed the desire to seek a channel to the Atlantic. Seizing the Essequibo and the adjoining maritime areas remain the best means of doing so.
Moreover, most of Guyana’s wealth is in the Essequibo: gold, oil and diamonds; and that most precious commodity, rare earth. It has been reported that Cuyuni Mining District has been allocated an area for the exploration for rare earth metals, including lithium, tantalum, niobium and nickel. This is treasure house of resources. The Essequibo region therefore is, and will continue to be, a source of economic wealth and development of Guyana. Strip Guyana of this endowment and it will be weakened over the long term, which is clearly the aim of the imperialists in Caracas. Essequibo’s wealth, especially its gold and diamond fields, also remain a tempting target for the Venezuelan military.
The acquisition of Bird Island from Dominica in 2006 has provided a good platform for Venezuela’s geopolitical foray into the Latin American and Caribbean region. We might long lament that Caribbean statesmen such as Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica turned over the ownership of Bird Island to Venezuela without weighing the implications for Guyana and the rest of the region. The acquisition of Bird Island without much opposition from the Caribbean region must have emboldened Venezuela in its quest to get its hands on the Essequibo. That Venezuela regards the Essequibo and the adjoining maritime areas as a great strategic prize can be seen in the events which took place after the last bidding for oil blocks last year and which led to the situation Guyana is facing today. Caracas’ response the award of the blocks was shrill and menacing. It provoked a harsh communique from Miraflores. Venezuela’s National Assembly then passed a resolution calling for the holding of a Consultative referendum. And the referendum did provide the occasion for the Organic law on the Essequibo and the creation of “Guayana Essequiba.” The call for elections in the Essequibo was a logical consequence of all of this.
With the auction, Caracas had to contemplate the
possibility of Guyana moving from a producer of 600,000 barrels a day to that of a Petro-powerhouse capable of producing a 1,000,000 a day by 2027 which would put it on the same level of the top players in the oil industry, Saudi Arabia included. Venezuela knows that with such resources Guyana can strengthen its diplomacy, obtain support of a military nature, defend itself more vigorously and be able to make the seizure of the Essequibo an increasingly difficult proposition.
The period after the attempt to hold elections in the Essequibo will be a testing period for Guyana. The nation must be prepared. There must be a nation-wide campaign to let the nation know the implications of what the elections in the Essequibo mean, using every available electronic platform. Our security machinery must be improved and well resourced. There must be a comprehensive diplomatic campaign to ensure that the elections are declared a fraud and the idea of a “Guayana Essequiba” come to nought. The United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council must be pressed into service. Above all, this is the time to tap into the human and other resources available in the Guyanese diaspora which will help us in the fight to maintain and sustain the territorial integrity of the nation. For all of this to be effective the Opposition and all relevant segments of the society must be involved.
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