Cause for concern -Walton-Desir
vernment and a return to the erratic votg patterns which characterized uyana’s pre-2015 international engageents,” the MP added.
She told the National Assembly that uyana has gained much by establishing elf as a reliable partner in regional and mispheric stability, and that it would be wise to depart from that form of diploacy.
Walton-Desir said that the framing of reign policy is indispensable for the odern state and is even more the case for mall developing state such as Guyana. reign policy then, she said, “must perrm the delicate balancing of the national erest whilst acknowledging our interpendence in an ever-contracting global lage.”
The MP said that the strengthening of uyana’s multilateral diplomacy and the provement of its regional, hemispheric d international presence depends not ly on sound policy, but also on the cale of Foreign Service personnel. She en said that it is the view of the opposin that the study of Guyana’s internanal relations, the understanding of its tional interest and the practice of the untry’s diplomacy should not be left to ance. The country’s foreign service pernnel, she added, are on the forefront of e actualization of its foreign policy and
was with this in mind that the
APNU+AFC coalition government reengineered and re- established the Foreign Service Institute, “which was for all intents and purposes put on pause by the PPP/C regime…to ensure that Guyana is equipped with a corps of edified and competent diplomats.”
‘Notable achievements’
Registering what she said was her disappointment at the failure of the budget to set out a coherent comprehensive vision for Guyana’s foreign policy, Walton-Desir said that this is the context within which national development takes place.
Walton- Desir, who had served as General Counsel of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority under the former government, said it is in this regard, that one would have expected that the government would have seized the earliest opportunity to clarify its foreign policy positions to citizens. She said that the tenure of the APNU+AFC administration was characterised by a steady, studied approach to foreign relations and she advanced that there were a few notable achievements stating that it was the now-opposition which identified Guyana’s Chairmanship of the Group of 77 and China as a strategic priority, which she noted resulted in Guyana’s ascension to the Chairmanship of the G77 in January.