I am glad that there is St. Vincent on the travel agenda of President Ali and President Maduro. I am still working through, though, my own construction of a possible meeting agenda. This is notwithstanding the publicly rigid line drawn in stone by Guyana’s President Ali. In three words: no border discussion. The combined APNU+AFC Opposition has added its own muscle to prop that line about no discussion, no negotiation, no nothing (pardon the Brooklynese) that has anything to do with the border controversy. I hear all of this and ask this: then what? What is the Kingston conversation about then? As much as I welcome it, why even be there, have it, if no talks about the border?
President Ali and the PPP Government have preached a constant refrain: we want peace, we are a peaceful nation, we are about peace. It has to be peace with honor. Because from my perspective, there is none other. It is arduous for me to visualize Brazilian President Lula letting the moment that he had worked for so hard pass without a word being said in the tightly guarded confines of the Ali-Maduro handshake, smile, and summit. Since he is the heavyweight presence in the room, he may have to use his potent jab to bring some sense to the two leaders in this embroiling controversy. It may even come to the point where the Brazilian may be forced to remove his gloves and knock heads together. Like I said, he is the heavyweight, and there is a lightweight and bantamweight, relatively speaking, in the room.
President Ali has nothing to lose. President Maduro has everything lined up, and on the line; the slightest crack, and it collapses. He does. In his version of Bonfire of the Vanities, I think that President went too far too fast, and now he is going to have to dial back and dial down his prior escalations. A U-turn is what I think could be in the making. How that is accomplished is beyond me at this time. The problem for Nicolas Maduro is that whatever he does he is damned. I shed no tears for him, for he dug his political grave with a live microphone and the nib of a pen. The former empowered him to say too much, and he did, while the latter spilled and splashed his unwisdom throughout the region, then around the world. Licenses for the interested in Venezuela to setup shop in Essequibo. Expulsion after 90 days for prospectors, explorers, operators, and producers.
The question is whether he was bluffing all the time with his bullying; just another political blowhard trying to create his own version of sunshine and running into a thunderstorm. Like that Greek fellow Icarus, it is my belief that Senor Maduro flew too close to the sun. Whatever he does, his wings will lose their luster, with the shears coming out.
I am thinking of 1938 and a British Prime Minister by the name of Sir Neville Chamberlain. He went to Munich and went back to Whitehall. Since then, history has been most unkind to him, given what he agreed to there. Appeasement became the dirtiest word in the political lexicon, and Neville Chamberlain the Great Appeaser. If President Lula acts according to form, President Maduro is going to have to start thinking of how much he has to retreat, how much face he is going to lose. I understand that the Venezuelans are a volatile bunch, so I pray that this brother of mine, only loses some face, and nothing more. As an aside, that could be pounced upon as one more example of what is defined as subversive in this mental and intellectual ghetto.
The fact that Maduro was nudged or shoved (cajoled) to travel to St Vincent is in and of itself a surrender of the heights on which he was perched. Truth be told, the call has always been for dialogue from the Venezuelan side, with Maduro as the lead baritone, in his best Paul Robeson imitation. But dialogue about what, and how to squeeze that into the conversation when President Ali has the equivalent of his inviolable marching orders: no border discussion. Even if there is an off the record word or two about the burning issue that stands before all, the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy cum dispute cum dead end, then what will be cleared to filter into the public domain, if anything at all? It is my humble position that there will be some overture, some segue, some slight detour into that forbidden border territory. Mark my words, and seal it with a $5,000 bill. US, to be exact.
Whether silence or some little something, Maduro is the one that is going to have to yield an inch, maybe even a mile or two. Some zeros added should help this to register better on the Guyanese side. Whatever is said, whatever is done, in these preliminaries, when Nicolas Maduro journeys from Kingston to Caracas, it will be one hell of a bumpy ride for him. The reception on the ground could be on the Artic side. In case appeaser is too much to chew, then sellout should go down more sweetly.
