WORKING in Guyana in the mid-1990s, after putting the Mirror newspaper to bed every Friday, my next day would be Lockdown Saturday – nothing to do with anything like a ‘COVID-1990’, just the day I exhaled and cleansed my spirit with selected Demerara spirits at my favourite watering hole.

It was simply a personalised therapeutic method of locking oneself away after five days — and nights — of living the rigid life of a Caribbean journalist accustomed to living and working in different places at different times.

I’d start-off the day’s therapy at Yip Sin (a small Chinese restaurant-and-bar opposite Freedom House on Robb Street), the actual verbal and virtual offloading-and-reloading featuring Hot Talk on Hot Topics over Not-So-Soft drinks, with Mouth-watering and Finger-licking-good snacks between Meaty soups and Saucy variants of the Talk-of-the-Town, as reflected on the front pages of the weekend’s newspapers.

The always-spirited drama often featured regulars, the likes of my ‘over-the-river’ friend Haroun Hussain, Neil Kumar, Kellawan ‘Peck’ Lall (and many like others) virtually ‘Called to the Bar’ after the morning’s political meetings to debate and argue (not ‘discuss’) different contemporary political issues in the Court of Guyanese Public Opinion.

By the end of each four-hour session, I’d head home with a treasure trove of topics for consideration for the next week’s articles, opinions and commentaries.

Some 28 years later in GT ahead of Christmas 2021, I didn’t get a real chance to check if Yip Sin’s replacement bar was still around, so I opted instead to do the next best thing: take Yip Sin to my hotel room, the select Demerara Spirits and varied Foods for Thought ordered through the front desk receptionist, including a hearty request for ‘as many old newspapers you can find…’

Back in Yip Sin time, Guyana Chronicle and Stabroek News were the only two dailies and between David DeCaires and Sharief Khan, their pages reflected news, issues and opinions on all issues, each clinging to its mandate as a state-owned and private newspaper, respectively.

Stabroek News editorials and DeCaires’ opinions, alongside those of literary chroniclers like Ian Mc Donald and a host of other contributors, were absolutely and loudly critical when necessary, but always respectful in content and argument, giving the widest elasticity possible to the concept of a Free Press in the then-emerging digital age when computers started to replace typewriters in editorial departments and information started becoming available between fingers and keyboards, faster than the stroke of any pen.

Like everywhere else where life is given to buried natural resources, the speed of new changes outpaces the society’s ability to adjust, resulting in the discussions and debates remaining anchored in the past instead of visioning the future – so that, the differences between the major parties is more about which feels it can do better in office, than how they can see the same future with different eyes and work together when and where possible, in joint national interests, learning lessons from the past to better shape the future.

The handling of oil by Dr Eric Williams’ People’s National Movement (PNM) in neighbouring Trinidad & Tobago after Independence is a living story pregnant with lesson for Guyana today.

The ‘Doc’ insisted ‘Oil can’t spoil’ while workers and peasants were split between ‘Sugar and Rice’– and for a good while T&T reigned as the only oil economy in CARICOM and its richest member-state, the political directorate(s) watering a sort of insular nationalism that led Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to remind fellow member-states that ‘Trinidad & Tobago is not the Caribbean’s ATM machine!’

But oil did eventually start to spoil in the post-Williams era, in ways that didn’t smell well for too many of those middle and upper-class wage-earning and private sector citizens who’d become accustomed to flying to shop in Miami, weekend parties in New York and Toronto, Playing Mas in London and generally ‘cutting style’ on other CARICOM neighbours with blue hundred-dollar bills lining their purses and wallets.

Venezuela’s experiences in the post-Hugo Chavez era, when his Bolivarian Socialist administration started paying dearly very early for daring to take drastic steps to ensure earnings from the nation’s oil riches reached and benefitted the most-needy, is another free catalogue of lessons for Guyana today.

I later flipped-through the pages of two copies of the previous weekend’s newspapers (Kaieteur News of December 17, 2021 and Guyana Chronicle of December 18, 2021) — and after a perusal with pen-and-paper in and on hand, I stoutly resisted just sliding into a Yip Sin-type ‘Back to the Future’ moment by coming to a much-too-early judgement of the extent to which the respective headlines could be an accurate yardstick for measurement of the present, or even a fleeting or flying weather vane or windsock signal for Guyana’s future.

Here’s why…
One paper featured frontpage headlines focusing on political and financial controversies such as Cost Overruns by a foreign exploring firm, ‘Domination of Oil Fund Committees’ by Government, ‘PPP/C Pays US $10M for Helicopter, Before Tender Board Approved Deal’ and ‘Minister Given Power to Waive Oil Companies’ Compliance with Targets in Local Content Bill’…

The other highlighted ‘More Than 1,000 Jobs To Be Created’, a multimillion-US-dollar investment in a ‘Multipurpose Fuel facility’, ‘$1.58 Billion (Guyana) in Contracts Terminated in 2020 For Poor Performance’, a ‘Modern, 11-storey Police Station to Replace Burnt-out Brickdam Structure’, ’40 Housing Units in Linden to be Constructed by February 2022’ and ‘New NRF Bill Dismantles APNU+AFC’s Architecture for Ministerial Involvement and Interference; Strengthens Transparency and Oversight’.

Nothing I read offered hope that in the current political dispensation there would soon be any chance of a multilateral revisiting by political stakeholders — first and foremost — of the cumulative and accumulated lingering effects of historical approaches to Governance of Guyana that haven’t worked over six decades of division.
But the eternal optimist in me still has hope, if only because I never hope against hope! (ends)