TODAY, my intention was to deal with the decision by the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) to issue a public advisory which claims that they were unable to reach me after multiple attempts. Given my pervasive availability, it has to be a blatant lie.
I believe the ERC is more interested in publishing names for form and spectacle than they are about substance and justice. That said, I have a personal Facebook page which I will use to discuss this matter so I wouldn’t have to waste column space to deal with this sort of frivolity. Frivolity in terms of the subject and circumstance. However, the implications and natural corollary of their actions have profound consequences for free speech and the protection of the fundamental rights of the individual. In that sense it’s a big deal and I intend to treat with this matter in that way.
That said, I cannot waste more space on the subject. The subject on which I’m interested in offering a quick commentary is Guyana’s growing stature on the international stage. A few weeks ago, the day immediately following the capture of Maduro, I opined on the Freddie Kissoon Show that in the atmosphere of uncertainty in Venezuela, President Ali needs to seize the moment to have America reiterate its support for our territorial integrity and that this subject should be expressly and unconditionally interwoven into any deal or demands the USA will make on Maduro’s successor.
I advocated for President Ali to get Rubio on a call post haste and where possible seek a meeting with Donald Trump. I do not know if my comments had any bearing whatsoever on the President’s actions and I will not even remotely venture into an egomaniacal territory, except to say that it probably makes me a good analyst or interpreter of international geopolitical current affairs. Because, within 48 hours of those comments, the President made a call to the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It must be noted that Rubio accepted the call without hesitation, reservation or condition.
Once it was announced that the call was made, a bunch of uninformed opposition-aligned know-it-alls flooded social media to comment that the president breached international protocol and offended sacred principles of international diplomacy. The argument being that the President lowered the esteem of his office by corresponding with a person who is not a head of state. I do not want to use unkind words like dunce or intellectual nitwit to describe these individuals, but they are begging for it.
I recall a few years ago the President made a presentation at the UN referring to the country formerly known as Turkey by its new official name, Türkiye (pronounced Tur-ki- yea), they referred to him as a ‘dunce.’ I immediately took to social media to educate and set the record straight. As it turned out, they were the uninformed bunch and they were loud about their lack of knowledge and didn’t even know that they didn’t know.
In like fashion, they criticised the president for reducing the presidency to the level of a Foreign Secretary and suggested it should be the Minister of Foreign Affairs who should be the interface. It probably should not be, and, whether we like it or not, nations do have geopolitical tiers. For example, the G12 Nations and the OECD countries are in a tier and has geopolitical recognition and strategic importance that the majority of other countries do not have. The world is divided and tiered based on military might, economic stature, population size or historical ties. Guyana is simply not on the level of geopolitical importance, economic stature, military capability or population size with the US. To remotely suggest that President Ali is on the same geopolitical plain with Trump is simply absurd.
Even if Ali and Trump were geopolitical equals, it still made sense to call Rubio, simply because a friendly relationship had developed between the two gentlemen. And in the heat of an invasion of Venezuela, it was strategic commonsense for the President to ring up his friend, exchange salutations, get a general feel of the diplomatic temperature and a sense of the priorities concerning the region inside the Whitehouse. This is useful information that our Minister of Foreign Affairs may be unable to extract, given the nature of these engagements.
One boldface critic of President Ali said that any PNC president will “NEVER” lower the esteem of his office and consent to meet with the Secretary of State. Then I pulled up and posted information that confirmed that while David Granger was president the U.S. never accepted a call at the level of the Secretary of State, instead, he could only manage to get an Undersecretary who has responsibility for the Latin American region.
This past week, we saw regional leaders lining up to get even a few fleeting words with Rubio. This is because they understand international relations that these opposition comics don’t. They understand that to get the attention of Rubio is a major geopolitical achievement for small states.
Soon President Ali will have a direct face-to-face meeting with President Trump. Many Guyanese presidents before him met with US presidents, but it was almost always on a sideline engagement either at the UN or Summit of the Americas. A specially arranged direct meeting with a sitting U.S. president at his office is a major diplomatic achievement for a small country such as Guyana. This is an indication of the rising stature of Dr Ali and a major growth of our geopolitical importance.
By the end of his second term, President Ali for sure will go down as the most consequential President in our history.