IT may sound funny that any citizen of Guyana would want to go down in history as trying to arrest the nation’s forward development thrust, but this is no joke, as there are in fact those who will actually seek triumphant plumage for what would elsewhere be seen as bordering on treason.

The latest shining example is of a lawyer described in the world press as being dedicated, for an entire decade, to preventing Guyana from developing oil to strengthen its economic base, trying hard and long, high and low, to do everything possible, in and out of courts, pulling every proverbial and actual trick in the book to block Guyana’s progressive development of its energy base at every turn.

Simply propelled by a selfish and insulting view that fellow Guyanese don’t have what it takes to learn from others’ mistakes and be creative in application of local standards to international protocols, the intent is to stop or delay progress at any and every turn, never mind anything else.

Never mind that such positions defy the conclusive reality that anyone assessing Guyana’s handling of its emerging energy base in the past decade can come to after examining the periods 2015 to 2020 and 2020 to 2023, those pursuing a blind path still continue stumbling along the way, their aimless aspirations leading them along all the way.

But it’s important to note that among those leading that forward march to nowhere are well-read yet mindless in pursuit of opposing, even now, the incremental and careful approach this administration has been taking to ensure that Guyana trots a sure and safe path in developing its energy base and using its oil-and-gas revenues to feed other aspects of human and national development for all Guyanese.

Such characters remain wilfully blind to the fact that this administration has been creative in its handling of energy matters and wedding oil-and-gas revenues to national development, as with the sale of carbon credits and induce equally wilful amnesia when it comes to the government’s insistence that companies hand back exploration areas they’re not exploring.

They find and offer every argument, no matter how ridiculous, to actually support those who claim the energy companies somehow own the government and dictate its policies, opposing all projects, plans and pronouncements on flimsy scatter-shot legal technicalities, firing at will with the hope that a pellet will hit an ant somewhere.

But the reality is that while there will always be such persons in every society, they also always happen to represent a tiny minority holding on to similar dyed-in-the-wool views in a changing world and a fast-changing Guyana.

Fortunately for Guyana, however, such intended stumbling blocks are treated instead as hurdles in a marathon that the government’s team is not only very experienced at overcoming, but has also shown, time and again, that while swimming in new waters, they also wade well.

The democracy that returned to Guyana in 1992 with the free and fair election of the first PPP/C administration has been nurtured over the three decades since and Guyanese have at every election since returned government of their choice, this trend extending to Local Government Elections (LGEs), whereby voters vote for continuity at local levels of what they’ve experienced at the national level since August 2020.

The ruling PPP and this PPP/C administration – the latter more than any other in the 21st Century – has managed the nation’s new oil wealth with the skill and care that take everything into consideration to ensure that the oil and gas continue to flow and revenues continue to grow – and that’s a fact those seeking to arrest Guyana’s development will simply have to swallow, with the announcement just this week that Guyana is on track to be South America’s wealthiest nation!