2022 INITIATES  HISTORIC EVOLUTION  FROM THE TRADITIONAL GUYANA NEW YEAR

WE have today entered  2022, and Guyanese, as they have always done, had frantically tried to complete the business of 2021 so that they will begin the new year with a tabula rasa, a clean slate.  This process is cathartic, and Old Year’s night is its climax.  This is a night of hope and stability and there is the underlying belief that however the new year finds one, one will be in that mode throughout the ensuing year. Thus, as the dawn of the new year suffuses the world,  one should be happy and free of care and this manifests itself in the many house parties, public dances at the  clubs and hotels, attendance at midnight church services or remaining at home in calm and quiet, with the resolution to be successful and though the pandemic had curtailed these Old Year activities, the celebratory spirit everywhere pervaded. In this new year,  however, from its very beginning, this established pattern of hope and stability and quietude has been disturbed by the intrusion of a host of novel problems which have no quick or easy solutions and the likes of which promise to continue from year to year, thus transforming the traditional new year.

Among these problems are  the COVID-19 pandemic becoming more dangerous without any reliable treatment to meet new strains; climate change with its international targets and the development of sources of alternative energy; cyclic flooding resulting in economic devastation and human suffering;  electoral problems threatening the social, economic and political viability of the country; the new oil industry with unsettling facets such as local content; environmental issues; the use and protection of the oil revenues;  the threatened determinist self-diminution of an important political party which could result in serious social and political instability; ensuring the country is not exploited by the many  financial and technological investments which are coming into Guyana;  fending off the inevitable pressures and challenges of the Dutch Disease, and so on.

We will briefly analyse a few from this daunting list and glean how it has changed the nostalgic new year of Auld Lang Syne.  There is the covid pandemic.  Guyana had done very well in confronting it:  It was one of the few developing countries that were able to satisfy the inoculation needs and achieve a  programme  of vaccination that was fairly successful, despite the strong lobby of non-vaccinators having over 70 percent of its population receive at least one dose.  And its shutdowns have never been as onerous as in many other countries.  But the advent of new viruses such as omicron and delta and the quick permutations of all the COVID viruses threaten to negate all the gains and hold out the alarming prospect of a COVID-tired health service and population being unable to confront another new onslaught.

At the last elections of 2020, the country barely escaped the destruction of democracy and the re-establishment of dictatorship.  What saved the day for democracy was the protective help of the ABCE countries and indeed the rest of the world.  No one is certain that efforts such as the electoral and constitutional reforms being proffered to protect democracy  would be successful and the world would not be willing to again protect democracy if Guyanese themselves do not do so.  There is, however, some hope that the younger population would be more willing to uphold democracy than their parents.

With climate change, the cycle of flooding has become regularly recurrent and the coastal drainage laid down by the Dutch much over two centuries ago is now inadequate.  Every year, the floods cause great economic loss to the country and to farmers and householders and there is much talk about moving the capital city and the coastal population to the higher lands of the interior.  The cost of moving the capital city and the economic base of the country would be prohibitively expensive and disruptive, and so ad hoc measures have been used from time to time to bring relief to flood-affected communities, but without any fundamental remedy being in sight.

Then there is the oil industry with its many facets such as environmental issues;  security and proper usage of oil revenues;  policing and expanding local content;  finding an antidote to the Dutch Disease by developing and making self-sustaining and profitable the country’s non-oil economic base, and so on.  In most developing countries, the discovery of oil reserves has led to national rejoicing, but in Guyana, obfuscated by politics, it has generated discord.

In the foreseeable future, funded by oil revenues and income from non-oil industries, Guyana will have achieved world-class social services and a standard of living comparable to the best in the developed world and no politician could survive by racial appeals for support, since the two main racial groups, the African and Indian are declining numerically and percentage- wise of the population and the new generation of young voters are more pragmatic and objective than their parents. With these new trends, the problems aforementioned will be solved or settle into equilibrium as new ones will arise, but the advent of the simple, rural, carefree, celebratory new year and the cathartic days in the run-up to it will never return.  The new year season is now gradually growing to resemble that of the developed countries, where in England for instance, New Year’s Day is not even a public holiday. But despite this inevitable evolution of the new year season, it will never lose its valued Guyanese character.

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