LIFE in this country has always been funny. Yesterday, I spent a long time at the Georgetown Hospital assisting someone to receive medical attention. You meet a lot of people at that hospital because there are lots of people there. And people want to chat with you, and since the waiting period is long, you tend to chat with them.
It is through these avenues, you come to know what the things are that interest Guyanese. In all my encounters, each day in this country, I have not met a soul who is not delighted that this country has become an oil country and that money will be coming in from that source for a long time in the future. Several fears I received is that the money will not trickle down to the sections of Guyanese society that really need it.

My response is that I believe it will. I am not doubting that companies and individuals will be enriched, but I believe President Irfaan Ali is going to follow in Dr. Cheddi Jagan’s footstep. People that do not like the government either for ethnic, political or class reasons will criticise the Ali presidency.
One has to expect that and it is their right to do so, but there are also many in society who should offer explanations that expose such a political agenda because people want to hear such explanations.

When you engage Guyanese, what you find out is the enormous difference in what the detractors of the government say and the things Guyanese believe in. I haven’t met a human in this country who wants Guyana to stop oil production.

All they want is for oil money to come their way. Of course, you can’t blame them. But their dream is a far cry from what the anti-government critics want. For example, as we sat waiting for the doctor, one patient explained that he hopes oil money will allow the government to buy more machines for the hospital because the examination he was there for, he had to wait a long time to receive.|

The point is people want oil money. But there are those who want us to get out of oil production because they feel that of all the nationalities in the world, it has fallen on the lap of Guyanese to save the Planet Earth.

They try to emulate fossil fuel critics from developed countries whose very transition into modern living was made possible by the fossil fuel industry and whose wealth is so massive that countries like Guyana would not see that in the foreseeable future.
For example, a cable car system between Italy and Switzerland built recently cost 65 million American dollars. That is 14 billion Guyanese.
It is interesting to note that the foreign-based Guyanese that want Guyana to save Planet Earth by going out of oil production do not say even one word of condemnation of the war efforts by developed countries.

The US has over 250 military bases all over the world that use an enormous amount of oil and gas. The foreign minister of Germany is from the Green Party and is one of the world’s most ardent supporters of sending arms to Ukraine’s war and Germany is doing just that.
You would think the last person to be a warmonger is someone from the Green Party. So we have a German born Guyanese, by the name of Andre Brandli. He writes often on Guyanese issues from his home country in Germany.

He wrote that in the 2020 election, 98 percent of the electorate voted. GECOM made public the amount on the electoral roll for the 2020 election. It was 660,998 electors. In the election 468,184 persons voted. If 98 per cent of a list of 660,998 persons voted, then actual ballots were 647,778. If official voting numbers were 468, 184, then where are the missing 179, 594 ballots?

Up to this day, a man who lives way in Germany, never visited Guyana on polling day in March 2020, never visited Guyana during the five-month election saga cannot state where the extra 179,594 votes are. See my column of December 3, 2022 titled. “Professor Brandli: Qualifications do not prevent one from writing nonsense.”

But people like Brandli, Isabelle DeCaires and a school of foreign-based Guyanese signed a letter on November 17 last year demanding that Guyana cease oil production immediately. But we are yet to hear their condemnation of their governments’ continuation of the fossil fuel industry. Not one word about that. Not one word about their governments’ use of fossil fuel to fight a war in Ukraine.