MP Charles: Is Browne being told diplomatically to go to hell by Guyana and he keeps asking for directions?

Sir Winston Churchill tells us seminally that diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell and he asks for directions.

Clearly our Foreign Minister, faced with what on the surface appears to be a diplomatic slap in the face as a result of Guyana’s downgrade of its diplomatic footprint in POS, is resorting to the cardinal sin in diplomacy of seeking directions.

He cannot see a diplomatic uppercut to his face even if he has been knocked out cold. And he is whom we have to depend on to protect our national interest?

No doubt Guyana will say otherwise and our relations remain intact. That is the language of diplomacy.

Our Foreign Minister posits that the reason for the downgrade is the Covid pandemic. Has he been so told by the Government of Guyana?

If he was, did he peruse the diplomatic language to determine whether that was indeed the real reason?

Is he now authorized to speak on Guyana’s behalf?

Has Guyana downgraded its diplomatic footprint in other world capitals because of this “presumed”, “Amery Browne inspired” Covid policy realignment?

How much notice was given to TT? Why is this change, as of 2 pm today, not reflected on his Ministry’s website?

PM Rowley has said that the friend of my enemy …. is my enemy. Could this be the underlying reason for a decision which must have been taken some time ago?

Dr. Rowley, as rotating CARICOM chairman, has belatedly come to the support of Guyana in its territorial dispute with Venezuela. That is a most welcome move. But it should not have come so late in the day and as a surprise. Eyebrows were indeed raised.

The dispute between Guyana and Venezuela provides a golden opportunity for TT to spearhead a rapprochement between both countries by bringing them to the table of reason and ideally getting Maduro to accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ in resolving the territorial dispute.

Let’s see how much influence Dr. Rowley has on his friend Maduro.

But is Dr. Rowley up to this once in a lifetime challenge? That could be his legacy in regional diplomacy.

The UNC misses former minister Dennis Moses. Most times he was silent. When he spoke no one understood. In that sense he was harmless. This Minister talks a lot. On few occasions he makes sense. He is however, more troubling in the sense that he thinks he knows about global diplomacy. But, as the saying goes, he does not know that he does not know. Therein lies the danger.

Silence, Minister Browne, is golden.