Last week during a discussion in the Suriname Parliament concerning the budget for the Ministry of Public Works and Spatial Planning, Minister Stephen Tsang made an unexpected announcement. He told the assembled MPs that the planned bridge over the Corentyne linking his country with Guyana would now be financed entirely by Suriname.
This proposed bridge has been in discussion ever since the days of the late Suriname President Chandrikapersad Santokhi, and under an MOU of 2020 it was conceived of as a joint project which would be financed by the two countries. Progress on it had stalled largely because of the restrictions on borrowing linked to Suriname’s debt repayment requirements.
Mr Santokhi lost the Surinamese election last year, but President Irfaan Ali was keen to pursue the enterprise with his successor, President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons. In a statement from Foreign Minister Hugh Todd it was made clear that at a meeting between the two heads of state on May 15th this year, “there was no discussion on financing of the bridge or a signal of departure from the collaborative approach that has guided the project from its inception.” He went on to say that Guyana had not been informed through the established mechanisms that the Government of Suriname “intended to assume sole responsibility for financing the bridge.”
This was subsequently endorsed by President Ali himself.
Minister Tsang’s extraordinary declaration ignores one essential fact, namely, that any bridge anchored in Guyana on the one side would require the agreement of this country before it could be constructed, whoever the financier was. And in this instance as has been indicated above, no agreement for a unilaterally funded bridge has been sought, let alone obtained.
Not altogether unexpectedly perhaps, Suriname has denied this saying that during the latest discussions it had “clearly indicated” its intention to assume responsibility for financing the bridge, and that this had been reaffirmed during the most recent bilateral meeting between the two heads of state. Given the history of Paramaribo’s conduct in relation to this country, there is good reason for the public here to harbour doubts about the accuracy of these claims. However, even supposing for the sake of argument that their officials at some level did muse on the matter to one or another of their Guyanese counterparts, as Minister Todd has said there has been no official proposal forthcoming through established channels. As such the situation remains what it was when the MOU was signed in 2020.
So what is this all about? It is really part of a pattern. Underlying it all are Suriname’s border claims. When it perceives Guyana to be weak, it engages in what can only be termed bullying behaviour, characterised best by its eviction of the CGX oil rig in the year 2000 as well as a plan for an aggressive move against Camp Jaguar which was aborted.
Paramaribo’s arrogance at the time is typified by the incident where after the eviction of the rig four Suriname soldiers landed at Scotsburg in pursuit of a passenger boat and fired shots to disperse the courageous residents, some of whom had armed themselves with bottles and sticks.
Surinamers have never recovered from what they regard as their humiliation in 1967 and 1969 in the New River Triangle at the hands of the Guyanese authorities, and since then they have made efforts to persuade the international community that the territory is theirs. They have employed the same tactics as Venezuela, as well as resorting to periodic belligerence coupled with intransigence. When President Ali was negotiating with Mr Santokhi, he appeared oblivious to the traditional difficulties of dealing with Suriname. The latter head of state may have been very sincere, but the problem was that he was not in a political position at home to deliver what he wanted. The failure to implement the fishing agreement was evidence of that.
Paramaribo has been watching Guyana’s case at the ICJ against Venezuela and there have been opinion pieces appearing in the Suriname media since last year on the subject of confronting the matter of the New River Triangle. It even came up during Minister Tsang’s debate in the Suriname Parliament. In addition, during the Suriname Energy, Oil and Gas Summit in June a map was displayed showing the New River Triangle as part of Suriname.
Then there is the matter of the Corentyne. For some years Suriname refused to include the river in border discussions insisting that Guyana recognise that it belongs to Suriname. This approach was fortified by the late President Venetiaan in 2007 who told his citizens that the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea had awarded the river to Suriname. It did not do so. The judgment on the maritime boundary does say in the introductory preamble that the river is Surinamese, but this does not form part of the award. The boundary in the Corentyne, therefore, has yet to be determined.
In 2008 then Minister of Foreign Affairs Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett stated unambiguously there was no agreement recognising Suriname’s claim to sovereignty over the river, in addition to which Surinamese officials could not arrogate to themselves the authority to institute charges on it. In recent times, however, the government has elected to pursue a ‘softly, softly’ approach, possibly because former President Santokhi appeared like President Ali to be prepared to pursue the kind of measures which would redound to the benefit of both countries.
But there is another factor: at that time Suriname was in economic straits, and Guyana appeared strong. Now not only is there a new government in power but Paramaribo is anticipating an oil bonanza to begin next year. In other words, we are moving back into one of our neighbour’s confrontational phases where it believes it is now in a position to apply pressure to try and extort concessions on border matters.
The boat charges, as Suriname claims, may have been in existence for some time, considering it says that in 2012 it gave GuySuCo vessels an exemption. However, since then they had clearly lapsed, and it is no accident they are being revived now. President Ali referred to the barriers they would create to commerce and the strain their implementation would place on bilateral relations. This had no resonance on the other side of the Corentyne where an opinion piece in DWT asserted “This river falls under Surinamese jurisdiction over its full width” and that therefore Paramaribo had the right to apply levies. What the President has to make publicly clear is that the boundary in the Corentyne has yet to be delineated, and that our next-door neighbour has no sovereign rights there.
Suriname presumably hopes that a unilaterally financed bridge would give it total control as well as sovereignty rights. There are many bridges in the world connecting different countries, and sovereignty on an international bridge is usually negotiated in the agreements prior to construction. In a very general sense, these tend to reflect either the median point in the river below, or its thalweg (deepest channel). No one outside the government knows what went into the 2020 Memorandum, but given Paramaribo’s record this latest move is designed to ensure it has sovereignty over the entire span of the bridge and inevitably the river below.
A Brazilian commentator has observed that “Control of a bridge between two countries is a powerful geopolitical and economic chokehold that heavily influences their integration.” Suriname will not be unaware of that.
At some point Paramaribo will have to be coaxed into some form of international arbitration on border issues. If and when that happens Guyana has to ensure that not just the New River Triangle is up for consideration, but also the Corentyne river. In the meantime, President Ali will have to accept that his favourite bridge project is best left on hold.
Discussion