Caricom’s Venezuela muddle

At Cari­com’s end-of-sum­mit news con­fer­ence in Grena­da on Tues­day, chair­man and host Dick­on Mitchell spoke at length on a range of is­sues. How­ev­er, he cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ed the ele­phant in the room—the fraught pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Venezuela two days pre­vi­ous­ly.

Every­thing Mitchell ad­dressed is im­por­tant to the peo­ple of the re­gion. Hur­ri­cane Beryl and the need for “cli­mate jus­tice”—hav­ing the biggest con­trib­u­tors to cli­mate change pay for the dam­age done by it. The lat­est ef­forts to en­sure sta­bil­i­ty in Haiti.

Mitchell spoke of the ini­tia­tive to re­duce the re­gion’s food im­port bill by 25 per cent by next year—an is­sue he tossed to his pre­de­ces­sor as chair, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali.

We knew go­ing in­to that news con­fer­ence that Cari­com lead­ers had dis­cussed Venezuela—by then in the grip of se­ri­ous post-elec­tion un­rest—be­cause Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gon­salves had said that he’d be urg­ing his col­leagues to con­grat­u­late Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro on his vic­to­ry. If the com­pet­ing in­di­vid­ual state­ments by a num­ber of OECS coun­tries and Guyana were any guide, the dis­cus­sions were vig­or­ous. Not a word on Venezuela from Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell.

Asked about the omis­sion by the sea­soned Pe­ter Richards of the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC), the chair­man’s re­sponse was as­ton­ish­ing.

“Cari­com does not have to have a po­si­tion,” he said.

“Elec­tions in Venezuela are do­mes­tic mat­ters. First­ly, Venezuela is not a mem­ber of Cari­com. Sec­ond­ly, we ex­pect, and it has al­ready hap­pened, that mem­bers will in­di­cate their po­si­tion.”

If the in­ex­pe­ri­enced prime min­is­ter does not want to be thought of as un­ready for the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of Cari­com chair, he’d come back and clean up those re­marks. He ought to have ad­dressed the is­sue frontal­ly, to be­gin with. Cu­ba is not a mem­ber of Cari­com, yet he found the time to con­demn the US’s decades-old em­bar­go.

Once he was prompt­ed to do so, he should not have been as rhetor­i­cal­ly care­less as he was. Venezuela is of vi­tal in­ter­est to Cari­com. It is a ma­jor eco­nom­ic and trad­ing part­ner of a num­ber of coun­tries and the main trad­ing part­ner of some.

Just four days be­fore the elec­tions, Maduro had grant­ed a li­cence to T&T (in part­ner­ship with BP) for the ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas from Cocuina, part of a larg­er gas field, Man­akin-Cocuina, that strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween the two coun­tries. The op­tics of the un­for­tu­nate tim­ing of Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young were shared with bpTT’s pres­i­dent David Camp­bell.

Some Cari­com lead­ers seem to go to great lengths to avoid up­set­ting Maduro. Their tepid state­ment last De­cem­ber both­sidesing Venezuela’s ag­gres­sive ref­er­en­dum on an­nex­ing 74 per cent of Guyanese ter­ri­to­ry was an ex­am­ple. An­oth­er was their ab­sten­tion and strate­gic ab­sence when a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for greater elec­toral trans­paren­cy was put to the vote at the Per­ma­nent Coun­cil of the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States in Wash­ing­ton on Wednes­day. Cari­com coun­tries weren’t sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for the fail­ure of the res­o­lu­tion. Mex­i­co and Brazil were as cul­pa­ble.

For some in Cari­com, prin­ci­ple seems to come a dis­tant sec­ond to eco­nom­ic self-in­ter­est; but I get that. The gov­ern­ments were elect­ed to–among oth­er things– im­prove the eco­nom­ic prospects and well-be­ing of their peo­ple.

Just af­ter mid­night on elec­tion night, amid op­po­si­tion ac­cu­sa­tions of polling ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, Venezuela’s Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil (CNE) had de­clared Maduro the win­ner over his main chal­lenger Ed­mun­do Gon­za­lez, 51.2 per cent to 44.2 per cent, with 80 per cent of the votes count­ed.

Maduro had suc­cess­ful­ly hob­bled the can­di­da­cy of Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do who had won the op­po­si­tion nom­i­nat­ing con­test by a land­slide last year but was af­ter­wards banned from hold­ing pub­lic of­fice. Her re­place­ment, Co­ri­na Yoris, 80, was un­able to file her can­di­date pa­pers in time. In­to the breach stepped for­mer diplo­mat Ed­mun­do Gon­za­lez.

The first to voice scep­ti­cism about the an­nounced re­sults were Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries. Chilean Pres­i­dent Gabriel Boric and oth­ers diplo­mat­i­cal­ly; Ar­genti­na’s Javier Milei—a vo­cal, mus­cu­lar ul­tra-con­ser­v­a­tive—far less so. The for­eign min­istries of sev­en Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ar­genti­na, is­sued a more mea­sured state­ment, call­ing on CNE to re­lease de­tails of the vote count.

Gon­salves’ de­c­la­ra­tion of sat­is­fac­tion that same morn­ing seemed in­de­cent­ly hasty. The peo­ple who know Maduro and the con­di­tions in Venezuela best are his own Latin Amer­i­can neigh­bours.