Editorial | Delcy Rodriguez’s brooch

Delcy Rodriguez knew her brooch was provocative. That she wore it wasn’t merely a diplomatic faux pas.

What is surprising was neither Grenada’s prime minister, Dickon Mitchell, and especially nor Barbados’ Mia Mottley, did not, during Ms Rodriguez’s separate visits to their countries, use the opportunity to publicly reiterate theirs, and the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM), support for Guyana’s territorial integrity, even as they pursue bilateral relations with Venezuela.

Ms Mottley’s omission is particularly notable, given that Ms Rodriguez’s visit to Bridgetown this week, wearing a brooch depicting a map of Venezuela with Guyana’s Essequibo region as part of its territory, was a fortnight after she did the same thing in Grenada. If the Grenadians missed the gesture, Ms Mottley shouldn’t have.

CARICOM, via its secretariat, has since reasserted its solidarity with Guyana and for the resolution of the dispute through the ongoing process at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Nonetheless, notwithstanding any private communication they may have with Guyana’s president, Irfaan Ali, Ms Mottley and Mr Mitchell, should make, or caused to be made, similar public statements of support.

Such a move would have value in the context of the many, and complex, challenges faced by CARICOM, including a narrative promoted by Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, that some members of the community had either sided with Venezuela and its renditioned president, Nicolás Maduro, or were lukewarm towards Guyana, in the territorial dispute. This manufactured perception should not be allowed to gain purchase with an economically emergent, which is understandably upset at Ms Rodriguez’s cheekiness in what Georgetown might have considered to be home territory.

ACTING PRESIDENT

Ms Rodriguez was Mr Maduro’s vice president until January, when, after months of intimidation, the US sent Special Forces into Venezuela to grab Mr Maduro and drag him off the America, ostensibly to face drug trafficking charges. Since Mr Maduro’s rendition, and US assumption of effective control of elements of Venezuela’s oil policy, Ms Rodriguez has been the country’s acting president.

Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar allowed the Americans to use Trinidad and Tobago’s territory for communications support for their Venezuela operation and possibly others in the Caribbean Sea, such as the blowing up small boats accused of transporting narcotics. Even before Mr Maduro’s capture, tension between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago under Ms Persad-Bissessar were badly strained because of the Trinidadian leader’s embrace of Donald Trump’s, the US president, assertive posture in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ms Persad-Bissessar strained relations with some CARICOM countries, which she mocked when they faced US visa sanctions, and at one point called CARICOM an unreliable partner. More recently she has been at odds with other members over their reappointment of Carla Barnett, a Belizean, as the community’s secretary general. Port of Spain claims that the reappointment process was flawed.

This part of the backdrop against which Ms Rodriguez visited Grenada and Barbados, her first foreign trips since assuming the post, in solidarity-building exercise.

VENEZUELAN OIL SUPPLY

With the war in the Middle East, the blockade of the Strait and rocketing oil prices, some regional countries hoped that the visit could lead to a new Venezuelan oil supply arrangement, with similar contours to the defunct Petrocaribe scheme, under which Caracas sold petroleum on a preferential basis. Guyana is a fast-growing oil producer, but CARICOM has no policy covering petroleum or gas sales or pricing in the community – a sore issue when Trinidad and Tobago was still a significant producer of oil and gas.

In Grenada and Barbados, Ms Rodriguez discussed possible cooperation in energy, including renewables, agriculture, education and the broader economy. She also invited Barbados to invest in Venezuela’s oil industry.

But there was Ms Rodriguez’s brooch, to which Dr Ali, Guyana’s president, took exception.

“No action, whether deliberate or inadvertent, should create the impression that the community’s platforms may be used to advance claims now before the International Court of Justice,” he wrote to CARICOM’s chairman, the St Kitts and Nevis prime minister, Terrance Drew. “CARICOM’s principled support for Guyana must be reflected not only in declarations, but also in the context and conduct of official engagements.”

“This is not a matter of symbolism alone,” he added. “It is a calculated and provocative assertion of a claim that Guyana has consistently and lawfully rejected…”

Grenada and Barbados, like other of CARICOM’s members, may have legitimate interests to pursue with Venezuela, but must be mindful of their obligations to the community and the optics of their actions. At the same time, Ms Rodriguez was either tone deaf or wilfully blind if she did not anticipate the effect of her brooch and the tensions its wearing in St George’s and Bridgetown would stoke in the community.

She has left a problem which Ms Mottley and Mr Mitchell must urgently cauterise.