As a South American state, Guyana shares borders on the east with Dutch-speaking Suriname; on the south with Portuguese-speaking Brazil and on the west, with Venezuela, a Spanish-speaking republic.
The latter falsely claimed two-thirds of Guyana’s territory; and a major portion of our Atlantic sea with its abundant oil, natural gas and seafood resources.
Venezuela has refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to give evidence before it of this bogus claim. Instead, like a barefaced big bully, it has threatened us, scared off investors, and has harassed our people.
It should be elementary in diplomacy that aggression is not an appropriate or acceptable response to litigation. But recently, Venezuela cowardly pounced on our fishermen as its “whipping boy”, and has thrown the crew of, at least, two tiny fishing boats into its jail.
Worse, Venezuela snatched the small fishing boats with their twelve-member crew well within Guyana’s Atlantic coastal waters.
Military Manoeuvres
The Venezuelan authorities sneaked up on the Guyanese boats just after the US Coast Guard ended joint military manoeuvres with Guyana off our maritime zone to protect us from illegal and unregulated fishing from outsiders.
Except for a subdued whimper, Venezuela did nothing when the Trump right-wing and reactionary regime dispatched a formidable armada that had placed a vicious Cold War-like cordon sanitaire ostensibly to block cocaine shipment through the Caribbean Sea to European destinations. The target was Venezuela whose President has a $15 million ransom on his head as an alleged “drug trafficker”.
Though Venezuela has placed a dagger at the heart of Guyana, this English-speaking republic of just over 750,000 inhabitants did not support any foreign armed mercenary intrusions into Venezuela to either grab Maduro or to overthrow his government.
Guyana paid a heavy price for not supporting the coup conspiracy. I believe that the democratically-elected Coalition Government was last year removed from office in a covert operation for not allowing Guyana to be the springboard for what could have been the biggest “October surprise”.
Friendly Guyanese People
Under Coalition rule, Guyana never interfered in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Instead, Guyana welcomed Venezuelan refugees on humanitarian grounds, provided them with food and shelter, and earmarked an area for them to be housed with access to health and educational facilities.
Venezuela has exposed itself to be ungrateful to the fraternal, friendly neighbourly Guyanese people. Venezuela faces growing isolation and can gain nothing from this arrogant aggressive posture. It should immediately release the Guyanese fishermen, and return them safely home to their families.
At home, sadly, other small folks are being used as political whipping boys in the seemingly engaged debate on reforming draconian and outdated marijuana laws.
At a time when almost the whole world has opted to decriminalize the use of small quantities of marijuana, the Guyana government has invented an approach of “gradualism”. Under this timid formula any person who is arrested for possessing 15 or less grammes of the weed, will be subjected to mandatory counselling. Those arrested for having between 15 and 30 grammes would, upon conviction, do a stint of community service.
The idea is to remove custodial sentences or jail time for possession of small quantities of marijuana to, inter alia, reduce overcrowding of our prisons with petty non-violent offenders.
Recreational Amount
While this does not go far enough, the political opposition wants the amount that would not attract jail time to be increased to 500 grammes. This, in my opinion, is literally an over-kill. My own view is that in freeing up the weed we should look for guidance at the recreational amounts in the Caribbean which were arrived at after extensive investigations, which is around 50 grammes.
There should be bi-partisan consensus on this matter, and less grandstanding and politicking. Let us do everything to keep the small guys, our youths, out of jail where they eventually and invariably die.
Remember the ballad?
“Hang down you head Tom Dooley; hang down you head and cry. Hang down you head Tom Dooley, poor boy you bound to die.”
(The author, a journalist and attorney, is the former Prime Minister of Guyana).
January 30, 2021
