Commander of Chief of the Armed Forces, President Irfaan Ali said Monday that the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) is being modernised with increased focus placed on border consolidation.
Speaking at the sod-turning ceremony for the new Brickdam Police Station, President Ali said the army’s assets, infrastructure and human capacity are being enhanced as well as its resources to ensure effective monitoring of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), using modern technology.
“The Guyana Defence Force…we are modernising. We are focusing a lot on border consolidation. Looking at our assets, infrastructure and people. Repositioning our assets, infrastructure and people. Building out new assets, new capability, enhancing our Coast Guard to effectively monitor our EEZ,” President Ali said.
At the same time, President Ali said the GDF aviation and technology sectors are being upgraded.
“We are bringing in a modern drone system and modernising our aviation section and our air capability enhancement. We are building out our hardware and software through enhanced technology,” he said.
According to President Ali, the efforts form part of the government’s move to enhance the country’s security services allowing accessibility across the country in executing their duties.
“Building out infrastructure and capability that will give us greater mobility and enhance our accessibility across the country,” he noted.
Guyana was recently forced to beef up security at its border following a dispute with neighbouring Venezuela over the Essequibo region.
It is a great and deliberate retrograde step when a formerly fledgling Third World country such as Guyana now riding on the cusp of a spring tide petro-bonanza wave has to divert and spend an enormous segment/portion of its windfall oil-generated resources to buy guns instead of buying butter to feed its long suffering poverty- stricken people.
This external military-related stimuli emanates from another Third World country namely expansionist Venezuela when in the post Cold War era both countries would have supported the UN disarmament agenda to allow deprived still developing countries to focus on allocating their financial resources on social, economic and infrastructural development.
Guyana is compelled to beef up its security capability in its vast landed 83,000 square miles more especially in the Venezuelan coveted but totally illegal claim to the Essequibo Region as well as in its 200-mile EEZ that is the current source of its huge GDP growth of 62% the latter of which is also claimed quite unwittingly and erroneously by the imperialist Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela that is not a party to the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention because it objected to the method of maritime boundary delimitation provided therein.
Now it is quoting chapter and verse from the said 1982 Convention that it turned its back on in 1982 by having refused to host the final adoption session in Caracas.
The primary beneficiaries of this Guyanese shopping spree/splurge for modern electronic offensive and defensive weaponry will be the USA, UK and Israel. USA and UK will also derive benefits from training and development of Guyanese military to man these new era weapons and Australia, PRC and North Korea will make a killing in supplying new maritime vessels with capability to reach 200 miles off-shore.
This is what the illegal wholly outlandish and indefensible Venezuelan claim over the Essequibo has spawned in the Region.
I have no doubt the ICJ will throw out the fictitious Venezuelan claim over Essequibo but Guyana has to arm itself for now to repel any insane attack/annexation from Venezuela that enjoys nationalist sentiment-mobilsation, retards the investment climate in Guyana, breeds fear in the front line communities and generates instability.
Venezuela is not only interfering in the internal domestic affairs of Guyana but also in the conduct of its foreign policies both of which violate the tenets of International law and the UN Charter that incorporates the mores and principles of customary law.