CHANGE in our Guyana has had consequences on the unconscious with its suddenness, for traditional habits are hard to break. We witness that with political parties that want the right to make decisions on the rights and livelihood of citizens but are rooted in its own repetitive drama. The issue with GECOM Commissioner Robeson Benn is a classic example of the resistance to change from a dangerous group creed that has lost its impact of subliminal racist rabble-rousing to an evolving mass, that the ‘creed’ still views as grounded in its provincial mode, which will be unable to resist making judgments outside of loud fabrications. But ‘usual suspect’ political parties are not the only culprits. So are businesses that cry for change but do not really want change if they are to be held in legal and financial partnership to change. Gone are the days when a phone call to family and friends overseas could generate a ‘raise’, or a visit to a friend from ‘foreign’ could enable a payday. To recognise the omens that herald change requires that we understand the dire consequences of change that went before. In literature, the classic book by Cervantes tells about the Spanish Knight Don Quixote whose refusal to accept the passing of the age of medieval chivalry led to his insane fabricated heroic pursuits, realised for what they were, only by his down to earth real world squire Sancho. History also records its lessons. The cavalry for some 3,000 years was the elite of armies in Africa, Asia and Europe, and though hardly recognised, horses played a significant transportation role in both World Wars I and II. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, the Polish deployed their cavalry against the Germans with some success but were forced back by the invading tanks (that included Russian) and machine guns, this conflict brought an end to the glorious age of Cavalry on the battlefield.
Guyana entered independence in 1966 with our traditional forms of employment intact, apart from opposition sabotage and the concocted border dispute with Venezuela, which included that country’s lobbying against any investment in Guyana up to 2013, that did cost Guyana billions of needed cash and severe economic and social setbacks. This was coupled with the oil hike of the 70s that initiated the drastic changes of national indebtedness that led to the blackouts, shortages and inability to expand from the traditional economic mould, though some efforts were tried, but the heightened oil prices diminished those efforts and wiped out a significant portion of local manufacturing.
Survival forced us in the late 70s to smuggling; entire districts in Berbice and on the Coast were transformed by this illegal, but necessary trade, as were city folk who embarked on the ‘Suitcase Trading’ to and fro journeys to the Caribbean and Panama, and to the North West, engaging the Venezuelans and Brazil. We became, then and afterwards, schooled in illegality with a passion for adventure and quick gain. After 9/11, the world of ‘Backtrack’, ‘drug trafficking’ and ‘money laundering’ were now linked to the financing of terrorism. The Banking laws changed and International law enforcement swerved full zoom in our direction. But before the 90s, by 1989 a map in the January edition of National Geographic placed Guyana as a confirmed gateway of the drug route to the USA and Europe, titled ‘The cocaine empire’.

I knew then, that our people at all levels, the genuine business people who were supplementing their operations with drug money and the hopeless grassroots seeking liberation from ‘crab barrel’ poverty were ill-equipped for the changes to come. We had to develop a legitimate economy, based on Laws, innovation and vision, to move from political street clever dealings that have caused the loss of endless lives and propping up constituency mock businesses to demonstrate national progress in a quickly changing world that we had no control over.

This is the tremendous task of Government from 2015 onwards, to construct models that harness the proven evident potential and to labour with new channels to expand every talent and potential at its struggling state in our population, these will require collaborations beyond our border, but efforts will have to be proven to demonstrate to our runnings-prone masses, that there’s a different way.

We have long forgotten the skill and talent-based cottage industries of our fathers and mothers, which must be resuscitated to fit into the new systems of expression to harness the semi-literate and unskilled mass of parents and young adults needing a platform to earn. While we prepare through training and edutainment, the mindset for the new frontiers, where science and technology command the economic shape of that landscape- every talent and skill currently- must be reviewed for its product potential, which will employ Guyanese and find its way to a niche market somewhere on this planet. The challenge lies with the harnessing of the expertise; the creative knowledge base to identify, understand and present to a critical world, marketable home-grown IPRs. This is the now and the future, whether we understand it or not.