GOOD news from Guyana knows no end these days: on the fast-track to becoming the world’s fourth largest offshore oil extractor and the richest nation in South America, already with the highest level of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the regional grouping’s fastest growing member-state, courted by Saudi Arabia and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), its President invited to visit over 50 nations, the nation recently elected as a Non-Permanent Member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, recently hosting a host of top international diplomats (including the US Secretary of State, China’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister and a top European Union diplomat) – and all that ahead of preparing to also host upcoming international conferences, including the 51st CARICOM Summit in July 2024.

Almost every press release from the Department of Public Information (DPI) these days is about something unprecedented in Guyana’s development history.

If it’s not sharing Carbon Credit benefits for Amerindians or building scores of new hospitals, it’s about handing over hundreds of new homes or house lots to thousands of citizens nationwide, or bringing water, electricity, solar power or internet – for the first time – to historically neglected communities.

President, Dr Irfaan Ali’s upcoming visit to China is also quite significant, as China is as much a part of Guyana’s new and rapid energy-based development thrust as the private global oil majors and new entrants also helping pump the crude out of the ocean floor quick enough to ensure Guyanese benefit more, earlier than later.

While critics and cynics anxiously await the so-called ‘Dutch Curse’, the government is hedging its bets for Guyana, wisely opting to stay out of an over-regulated OPEC and instead extract the Black Gold quickly, at a time when its crude is most wanted everywhere and the price is just right.

It’s also strange but true that with the breakneck speed at which oil guzzling nations are trying to wean themselves off fossil fuels to adopt new green (wind, solar, electric, hydro) and alternative forms of ‘clean energy’, Guyana (and the world) can also learn, at great costly peril, that oil can indeed spoil.
Guyana’s South American neighbours and partners welcome its increasing engagements and CARICOM partners are engaging more directly with the new nation, quickly changing the face and shape of national and regional landscapes.

The PPP/C administration elected by free and fair votes since the return of democracy in 1992 had already compared positively vis-à-vis the opposition’s dismal delivery record, when the losing coalition stole the results of the widely observed 2020 presidential and parliamentary poll.

And the result of the recent Local Government Elections (LGEs) was also a mid-term endorsement of the PPP/C administration.

Unable to present itself as an alternative government, the opposition is relying on kneejerk responses instead of entering into a necessary period of honest review of leadership since the five-month 2020 electoral heist.

If ever the race card exploded in the face of those relying on it as a reliable political weapon, the LGE result was also more proof of changing political tides that should have sent red flags flashing across the opposition’s green pastures.

But while its grounded critics gather moss, the government continues on a roll, consistently recording unparalleled achievements in terms of addressing people’s long-outstanding needs in the shortest time.

Georgetown is an ongoing construction site as old structures give way to new and futuristic investments.

Regions, towns, villages and neighbourhoods too long neglected in the past are finally welcoming hitherto unseen levels of immediate government assistance, while youth, women and children, public employees, self-employed persons, pensioners and others in need all breathe long sighs of relief, as an always better new Guyana day dawns every morning.