GROWING up under the Union Jack in the mid-to-late 60s, the only references to British Guiana came from adult talk by men at the domino table outside the street side rum shop about its reputation for ‘BG Plantain’ or the ‘BG War,’ reflected in two songs by The Mighty Sparrow in 1966.

‘BG Plantain’ was about a Trinidadian woman complaining that Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams had unfairly banned the sizeable British Guiana (BG) produce to protect similar but smaller local produce, while ‘BG War’ was about Sparrow’s personal concern about a fire in Georgetown being allowed to spread to ‘Tiger Bay’ and ‘burn down de hotel where all me Wahbins does stay…’.

A dozen years later I would land in Guyana for the first time, by then better able to read and understand the hidden messages between the lines of Sparrow’s Guyana songs – BG Plantain more of a saucy social commentary, while BG War was a straight-out political commentary that identified PNC Leader and ‘Burnham’ with the blazes burning-down ‘Bookers’ and ‘the whole of BG…’
But in the 55 years since ‘The Doc’ banned ‘BG Plantain’ in Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana has now surpassed T&T by leaps and bounds in terms of its oil-and-gas potential, such that Exxon and other oil majors have been pulling out of Trinidad and heading next-door to Guyana.

And it’s now the ‘Mud Land’s’ turn, as the fastest-growing oil economy today, to confidently borrow and use Dr Williams popular phrase, “Oil can’t spoil…”
The PNC-led APNU+AFC Alliance of 2015-2020 and then the current 2021-2026 PPP/C administration have both had turns at leading the transition to oil and gas, but as per usual in Guyana’s politics, you’d swear the PNC discovered oil and the PPP is now benefitting.

Fact is, ExxonMobil has long been after Guyana’s oil and between 1992 and 1996, President Cheddi Jagan was not too hot about an Exxon proposal to extract Guyana’s oil on the basis of a 65 per cent-35 per cent deal in the US multinational corporation’s interest, privately telling close-enough comrades he’d ‘rather the oil stay in the ground…’
Today, the PNC/R is accusing the PPP/C of the same things the latter accused it of and there’s no sign that under Norton there can be any common denominator for arriving at mutual agreement on how best to handle the nation’s oil reserves.

Instead, in keeping with historical trends, Opposition parties stand accused of ‘opposing for opposing sake’, more with a view to replacing each other than working together in any kind of patriotic Coalition for national progress.

From independence in 1966 to republican status in 1980, from a return to electoral democracy in 1992 to a return to scorched-earth ethnic strife 1997-98, from Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham jointly leading the PPP in 1953 to their respective deaths in office, Guyana has contributed to the liberation of Southern Africa and has been associated with progressive governments and causes in developed and developing countries in Europe and North America, Asia, the Arab world, Latin America and the Caribbean.

It’s still the largest member state of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and alongside Suriname as new oil-and-gas Caribbean economies on the shoulder of South America, is now more than ever best suited to lead the Region’s expansion into The Guianas and Latin America – and reshaping ties with Belize and The Bahamas, Haiti and The Dominican Republic and the island chain stretching from Jamaica to Trinidad & Tobago.

Notwithstanding current continuing territorial differences, Guyana and Venezuela’s oil reserves more than double Saudi Arabia’s and alongside latest findings in the Guianas, this part of the world has what it takes to be the world’s next oil basin.

From BG Plantain to Stabroek Block in five-and-a-half decades, a New Guyana is quickly taking shape, with the economy growing and outpacing the type of political reckoning that’s always been dreamed of, but has remained elusive for some six decades, thanks to one of the widest political divides in contemporary Caribbean politics.

But it all has to do with leadership.