Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Founder and co-di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Pol­i­cy Con­sor­tium, Prof An­tho­ny Bryan, be­lieves T&T is walk­ing a “tightrope” on the Venezuela and Guyana ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute, as tra­di­tion­al­ly, T&T has had close ties with the two South Amer­i­can coun­tries.

His com­ments have come as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will be present at the talks be­tween Venezuela and Guyana in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to­day.

“To­day, T&T walks a very tight rope, hav­ing to bal­ance the de­fence of Guyana’s sov­er­eign­ty with its eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests with Venezuela. T&T’s re­la­tion­ships with Guyana is strong, there is a kith and kin re­la­tion­ship based on mi­gra­tion, fam­i­ly con­nec­tions and busi­ness en­ter­pris­es,” Bryan said on Tues­day night at a we­bi­nar host­ed by the Of­fice of the Vice Chan­cel­lor in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Fac­ul­ty of Law and the Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Cave Hill Cam­pus, Bar­ba­dos.

“So that to­day, the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T finds him­self at the in­ter­sec­tion of geo-po­lit­i­cal is­sues that place T&T in a sen­si­tive but cru­cial po­si­tion. On one hand, he must nav­i­gate the grow­ing ten­sions, be­tween Guyana and Venezuela over Venezuela’s re­newed claim to the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion. The cur­rent T&T Gov­ern­ment aligns clear­ly with Cari­com on the mat­ter.”

He al­so gave a his­tor­i­cal view which shows that Venezuela, as a re­gion­al pow­er, has al­ways kept its eyes on po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments in T&T.

He added that T&T’s first Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, was “prophet­ic” on view­ing Venezuela as a “new im­pe­r­i­al pow­er” in the Caribbean.

“From time and again, when there have been civ­il dis­tur­bances in T&T, as in 1970 and 1990, Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment emis­saries have al­ways strong­ly sig­nalled mil­i­tary and oth­er as­sis­tance to the gov­ern­ments of T&T and con­veyed the mes­sage that ‘Trinidad es nues­tra’ or, in Eng­lish, ‘Trinidad is ours’.”

Bryan called Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment a “cor­rupt regime” and al­so claimed Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment is us­ing the land dis­pute to dis­tract its pop­u­la­tion and wider world from po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic prob­lems in that coun­try.

“A friend of mine called the cur­rent episode ‘Maduro’s weapon of mass dis­trac­tion’. He has been dri­ving na­tion­al­is­tic pas­sions that he will strug­gle to con­trol. It is ob­vi­ous, he prefers an eco­nom­ic war to a mil­i­tary one. His bot­tom line is to scare in­vestors away from Guyana.”

Bryan al­so urged the Caribbean coun­tries to move away from de­pend­ing on Venezuela’s oil.

“Caribbean re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty can­not be based as it was in the past on Venezue­lan largesse and on re­liance on a new Petro­caribe pro­gramme. That agree­ment dur­ing the Hugo Chávez ad­min­is­tra­tion, is one of the great­est debt ac­cel­er­a­tors for the pro­gramme’s mem­bers and one of the ful­fil­ments of Chávez’s dream that oil could be used as a po­lit­i­cal weapon,” he said.

“We must avoid that sce­nario. Af­ter the meet­ing in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Venezuela has an­nounced that it will write off St Vin­cent and the Grenadines’ debt to Petro­caribe. Make of that what you will.”

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Guyana Mo­hab­ir A Nand­lall, who al­so spoke dur­ing the we­bi­nar, is con­fi­dent that the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will not al­low Venezuela to take away the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion from Guyana.

“It is high­ly, high­ly un­like­ly that the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will al­low Venezuela to do any of the things that it is threat­en­ing to do. If Venezuela is al­lowed to get away with this, ig­nor­ing this ar­bi­tral award, then I do not know how many oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al dis­putes that will af­fect, be­cause a prece­dent will be set. This is an area of peace. We have not had this type of mil­i­tary ac­tion in at least in decades in this re­gion and one would hope we don’t go down that road. Cari­com has stood with us.”