As reported in Kiskadee Watch on Friday last, differences within the PPP have exploded in a public spat over the Ukraine war. The PPP has historically developed positions on most important internal and external issues. The discussions would create platforms for disparate views to be aired internally in confidential debates. Once a position is arrived at, members are expected to support the Party’s position, whatever their personal views. Where the party has not taken a position, but the Government has, the party would be expected to follow the Government’s position. In the case of Ukraine, the party has not taken a position, and the Government has merely called for peace. In view of the Government’s pro-US stance in foreign affairs, Hydar Ally probably felt that it was safe to publicly castigate the Russians by calling for a withdrawal of troops and the end of the war by Russia. In the absence of an official position on Ukraine by the party and the walkout by the Government on Netanyahu at the UN, Donald Ramotar may have concluded that it was safe to hint at pro-Russian and pro-Palestinian support.
It is now clear that with the de-ideologization of the PPP and the adoption of a pro-US stance in foreign policy, some friction would have been likely to occur. But this ought not to be taken as some kind of deep schism within the PPP. The ‘old guard,’ to whom Kiskadee Watch referred no longer exists, if by ‘old guard’ Kiskadee Watch intended to refer to the left in the PPP which, until well into the 2000s, held sway. That leadership group of Janet Jagan, Donald Ramotar, Clement Rohee, Moses Nagamootoo, Komal Chand and many others, have mostly passed on or are no longer active in PPP politics. Donald Ramotar, and maybe one or two others, are lone voices of the left remaining within the leadership of the PPP. Their positions are becoming daily more uncomfortable. The egregious shift in posture by the Government on Cuba must have been a bitter pill to swallow.
The Government of Guyana faced difficult choices in 2020. At that time, it was clear that the PNC will forever remain a threat to democracy in Guyana. They appeared that they would be forever wedded to stealing elections, unable to take their hands out of the cookie jar of election rigging. And oil had begun to flow under what many had complained was an agreement excessively favourable to the oil companies. It is not known whether the PPP switched gears in relation to renegotiating of the oil contract as a quid pro quo, silently or otherwise, for the American role in halting the rigging or whether it did so for some other reason. It never explained until it came upon and deployed the alleged principle of ‘sanctity of contact,” which relates to the violation of a contract, not the voluntary renegotiation of its terms.
But at the same time, Guyana was facing what many believed to be the imminent threat of invasion by Venezuela. Guyana had no military means of resisting Venezuelan threats and it is clear that the only way the Government conceived that it could secure Guyana’s borders from Venezuelan aggression was by a close alliance with the US. This alliance was sealed when US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, visited Guyana in March 2025 and Rubio reaffirmed the US’s strong support for Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and issued a warning against Venezuela aggression. It is difficult to find fault with a strategy designed to protect Guyana from certain dismemberment that would inevitably result in a Venezuela invasion, not to mention the capture of its oil industry. It is also difficult to conceive why the Guyana Government has to throw Cuba to the wolves when it has done so much for Guyana, for African liberation and for many other developing countries.
Whether or not the supporters of Russia’s action in Ukraine have as their baseline the USSR’s intervention in Eastern Europe in the days of the Cold War, Russia’s explanation for its invasion of Ukraine has to do with its security. It has explained that NATO’s decision to admit Ukraine into NATO at its Bucharest Summit in 2008 posed an existential threat to its security. Russia felt that the presence of nuclear weapons on its borders could not be tolerated. The momentum to implement this decision was accelerated with the coup in Ukraine, backed by the US, in February 2014. This led to the Russian takeover of Crimea to prevent access by NATO to its ports and the outbreak of civil war in Ukraine with the seceding of the Eastern, Russian-speaking, provinces and several massacres in those areas. The Minsk 2 agreement, brokered by European countries, was described by former Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, as a ruse to give Ukraine time to build up its forces. As late as March-April 2022, when productive negotiations took place in Istanbul, British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, traveled to Kiev, reportedly to persuade Ukraine not to sign a deal and promise Western support in the war.
With the position taken by Guyana on Cuba, which helped the PPP government as far back as 1962-1964 when it was under siege, Guyana can no longer be considered to be part of the non-aligned nations of the world. For the future, its foreign policy is expected to be aligned largely to the policy choices of the US.
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