CARICOM should create military team to deal with issues in member states

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The initial success of the Argyle Declaration speaks to the regional abilities to defuse conflicts and broker negotiated peaceful solutions. The Venezuelan boundary dispute officially began in 1841, when the Venezuelan government protested alleged British encroachment on Venezuelan territory. It was the intention that the Geneva Agreement of 1966 between the governments of Guyana (formerly British Guiana) and Venezuela would have resolved the long-standing territorial dispute between the two countries over Essequibo. Interestingly, the Essequibo region makes up two-thirds of Guyana.

The diplomatic row over the Essequibo region has flared up over the years, but intensified in 2015 after ExxonMobil announced it had found vast amounts of oil off its coast.

It is important to contextualise events leading to the Argyle Declaration. Prior to this, Venezuelans voted in a referendum to approve the takeover of the Essequibo region. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that “Venezuela shall refrain from taking any action which would modify the situation that currently prevails in the territory in dispute”. It plans to hold a trial in the spring on the issue, following years of review and decades of failed negotiations. However, Venezuela does not recognise the ICJ jurisdiction on the issue. The escalating rhetoric had prompted troop movements in the region. The prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, played mediator and conveyed a meeting between the presidents of Guyana and Venezuela. The region has had its fair share of instability –the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and the subsequent political and social instability in Haiti. Let us not forget the attempted coup in Trinidad and Tobago in 1990 by the Jamaat al Muslimeen. The overthrow of the government of Eric Gairy in Grenada in 1979 by the New Jewel Movement, led by Maurice Bishop, clearly indicates that CARICOM should implement a rapid response military team to intervene in member states. There are those who argue that Maduro’s calculated move was done as a distraction to all the economic woes currently in Venezuela. In spite of all of the economic upheavals being experienced in this Latin America country, Venezuela contains the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Venezuela’s economic crisis has been exacerbated by US sanctions imposed on its oil sales over the 2018 election of Mr Maduro. On the other hand, Guyana’s economy is booming largely due to offshore oil reserves, and its output is expected to triple to more than 1.2 million barrels per day by 2027.

WAYNE CAMPBELL

waykam@yahoo.com