It is Day Four at the Peace Palace. Guyana’s legal team has been making the case all week that the 1899 Arbitral Award still binds. Venezuela has been making the case that the court has no business hearing it at all. The hearings run through May 11.

Out here in the islands, the question is quieter but uglier: where exactly is everyone else in this fight?

LEROY: Lemme tell yuh straight. Watch how the Caribbean stand up when one of we own gettin pressure from a big country. Watch how loud the support is. Watch how clear. Now watch how loud Trinidad been on this. Watch how loud Jamaica been on this. Watch how loud anybody really been on this besides Guyana itself and a few statements from CARICOM that read like dem write in the same hour and copy-paste.

This ain’t no Guyana fight. This is a Caribbean fight. Because if Caracas can wake up tomorrow morning and say a chunk of Guyana belong to dem, what stop them from waking up the day after and saying something about Trinidad gas waters? What stop anybody else from looking at the small-island map and deciding to redraw it?

We been here before. Long time ago, when the British and the French was carving we up like cake. Same pattern. One country in the dock, the rest of we standing in the back saying “well, hmm, complicated situation.”

CHERYL: Now Leroy, calm yourself. Calm. yourself.

CARICOM has been on the record from the start. Bridgetown has been on the record from the start. Mottley spoke on this last year, on a stage you could not have ignored if you tried. The position is settled. The territorial integrity of Guyana is the position of the regional bloc. Full stop.

What you are asking for is theatre. You want every Prime Minister in the region holding a daily press conference about a court case that is being argued by lawyers in a courtroom in The Hague. That is not how international law works. That is not how diplomacy works. And — let me say this gently, son — that is not how small states protect themselves.

Small states protect themselves by speaking once, clearly, with the bloc, and then letting the institution do its job. Loud does not mean strong. Loud means insecure.

LEROY: Insecure? Auntie, with respect. Insecure is staying quiet because yuh fraid Caracas might cut off some trade route. Insecure is calculating the cost of every word before yuh open yuh mouth. The bloc statement was good. I will give yuh that. The bloc statement was correct. But the bloc statement was March. We in May. The hearings dem on right now. Where the follow-up?

And don’t tell me about how international law works. Brother, international law works when the political weight behind it is real. The court will rule. Fine. Then what? If Caracas decide to ignore the ruling — and dem already showing the world dem will ignore the ruling — then what is the regional response? Is the bloc gonna meet again and write another statement? Or is the region gonna actually back Guyana with something tangible?

That is the question I wantin somebody to answer. And the silence so far is the answer I fraid we already getting.

CHERYL: Leroy, you are conflating two different things. The legal phase and the enforcement phase. We are in the legal phase. The legal phase is happening exactly where it should be happening — in front of the court, with Guyana’s team putting forward the case Guyana itself chose to put forward. The region’s job in the legal phase is to not muddy it. To not give Caracas any opening to claim the case is being prejudged in the diaspora press before the bench finishes hearing it.

When the ruling comes down — and it will come down — that is when the region’s posture matters. That is when the political weight you want to see has to show up. And it will. Because if it does not, you are correct, the precedent is catastrophic for every one of us.

But you cannot demand that posture in May for a ruling that lands months from now. That is not strategy. That is performance.

LEROY: Performance is exactly what the region need right now. Yuh think Caracas not performing? Yuh think the referendum was a quiet legal exercise? Dem stage that whole thing for the cameras. Dem made up a state name. Dem passed a law. Dem put it on television.

When the other side performing, and yuh staying quiet because yuh think performing is beneath yuh — yuh losing the narrative war while yuh winning the legal one. And the narrative war is the war that decide whether the legal ruling actually mean anything.

I want to see one Prime Minister, one, stand up this week and say “Essequibo is Guyana, our bloc is unified, and any defiance of the court will be answered.” One sentence. That cost nothing.

CHERYL: And it would be picked up in Caracas as a coordinated escalation. Which is exactly what they want. Because then they get to play the victim. Then they get to call it foreign interference. Then they get to rally their own population around the flag.

You think you are pushing for clarity. You are actually walking into the trap they have laid.

LEROY: Or maybe the trap is staying quiet so long the rest of the world forget who side this is.

CHERYL: The world is not forgetting, Leroy. The world is watching the Peace Palace. Which is exactly where the world should be watching.

Crossfire is a recurring debate franchise from Tradewinds Brief. Cousin Leroy reports for the Trini lane. Auntie Cheryl reports for the Bajan lane. They do not agree, by design.