THERE is a Psalm that I believe every young Guyanese should know, regardless of religion or even if religious at all, and that Psalm says, “I shall not be moved.”

This week, the New York Times published an article about Guyana called the $20B question (USD of course). This follows an article by the Wall Street Journal about Guyana’s oil prospects, and together they have announced to the world that Guyana will shortly be the place to be.

Much of the reaction to the article, both positive and negative, tells me that it has helped open up Guyanese’s sense of what’s possible.

Take for instance that Guyana is expected to triple its economy in five years, making it by far the fastest growing economy in the world. Take for instance that Guyana can receive up to US$20B oil revenue a year by the late 2020s; that Guyana’s entire national budget is a little over US$1B currently puts this into perspective.

This is reinforced by Rystad Energy’s prediction that we should produce about 700,000 barrels a day by the late 2020s. That’s almost a barrel a day per Guyanese citizen, which translates to US$70 a day at current oil prices, or US$2100 a month.

And, dear readers, let’s not forget that Exxon has no intention of bringing drilling to an end. As it stands, the company has only drilled a small part of its overall offshore block.
Simple math says that if discoveries continue at this rate, there should be something like 21 wells in total, with 17 bearing oil, and four or five being dry.

I’ll say it again, “I shall not be moved.” In fact, barring a civil war, Guyana should forge ahead so robustly, we’ll see Guyanese abroad starting to move back in droves; once they can get over the mindset that living in the United States is somehow always preferable.
This notion leads to the other, less rosy aspect of the New York Times article, which many Guyanese were rightly annoyed by. The Times referenced educated Guyanese as having left, and those remaining as plagued by HIV, crime and suicide.

I’ll be the first to admit those things do affect Guyanese, but something about this smacks of a worrying attitude.

I could almost hear US President Donald Trump saying those words, while uttering his famous expletive about the type of countries he believes places like Guyana to be.
Coming from a white, male author with a vaguely Northern European last name of the region Trump so admires, these words proved even more troubling. There is another meaning to “I shall not be moved,” and that is that Guyanese need now to stand firm and reject the kind of blanket prejudice and demeaning attitude we have long been subjected to, often even by our own fellow Guyanese living abroad.

If ever there was a time for Guyanese, especially young Guyanese who have not lived so long under the thumb of this humiliating attitude, to put a stop to it, that time is now. We must differentiate between the good and the bad things about the US, rejecting the bad and embracing the good. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt stressed the importance of freedom from poverty, not merely because it alleviated suffering, but because it enabled men and women to live with dignity. It is words like that that we will accept from US leaders.

And that is what we need to now channel this good fortune to; a life of dignity. That means being supported enough from revenues that biting poverty is a thing of the past, but it also means not accepting the types of handouts that make us dependent on criminal, shamelessly corrupt regimes.

To live with dignity means being able to choose what’s right, not just what you desperately need. I believe the coming decade must be about uplifting the Guyanese people; about programmes like unemployment insurance to shield laid-off workers from this dark desperation; or student stipends tied to tertiary or technical education, incentivising young people to move forward.

And now I want to say that there is a third meaning to “I shall not be moved”, and that is that we as Guyanese must not accept policies meant to enslave us by making us dependent on political parties.

Votes will not be bought here. Our dignity; our common mission of uplifting each other, must be a guiding fire. Oil money that serves to bring us right back to a veiled form of slavery and indentured labour is not oil money we want. There is a new Guyana being born; one that has too long been hidden from the light.

Long live this new Guyana!