MY September 5 piece was on the need for Guyanese in the diaspora to write and inform us here in Guyana about crucial and sensitive issues in the world’s most important countries that they live in. The Government of Guyana has been receiving a profusion of opinions, suggestions, and demands since August 2020 from Guyanese who have citizenship of some of the world’s most influential nations.

Almost 100 per cent of the people who are on this bandwagon are not contributing to Guyana’s educational system, the Treasury, or work part-time or temporary in Guyana’s economy. Their existence is embedded in the country they embraced as their new home when they left here decades ago. They hold or held comfortable occupations in other countries where they have citizenship.
These foreign-based Guyanese who write volumes in the media both print and online editions and on social media are trained minds that Guyana can use in its education system. But these folks never contribute even a month of no-pay leave to help share their skills.

Some of the names are well known because of their huge presence in the media. Dr. Vincent Adams wrote recently the following words about these expatriate Guyanese, “people with decades of extensive international credentials in academia and industry.’ I replied to Adams to let him know he came back in 2015 to serve the APNU+AFC government when he was in his early seventies after retiring in the US where he worked all his life.

One of the greatest ironies in current political debate is the website of a frenetic anti-government organisation named Oil and Gas Governance Network (OGGN). If you go on its webpage, it extols the education credential of its leadership and did something silly that opens it to plausible condemnation. It lists the names of its hierarchy and their careers. All the careers were built in foreign countries and those names are either retirees or people still working. Where is the contribution to Guyana?

Three names come up all the time. Dr. Alissa Trotz lives and works in Canada. She informs us a few years ago in a letter to the Stabroek News she has tenure in her job at the University of Toronto (my alma mater). I have lived all my life in Guyana and taught 26 consecutive years at UG and never saw Ms. Trotz even working at UG for a day. Dr. Nigel Westmaas left Guyana decades ago and has parted ways with Guyana.

There is the co-owner of Stabroek News, Isabelle DeCaires. She criticised the clothes the President wore when receiving a leader from the Middle East. She wrote in her newspaper that Guyana should not have any relationship with Saudi Arabia. Ms. DeCaires is British and never worked in Guyana.

My question is, why they do not want to educate us who live here about the dangerous directions their own countries are going into? Ms. DeCaires is one of the signatures to a letter in the Stabroek News of November 17, 2022 in which the writers demand that Guyana, with immediate effect, stop oil production.

But in Ms. DeCaires’ own country, her Prime Minister two weeks ago backtracked on zero emission in the foreseeable future. I refer Ms. DeCaires to a sound rejection of what her PM did by well-known Guardian columnists, Martin Kettle and Caroline Lucas. Their columns of September 20 are devastating. Former Prime Minister of the UK, Liz Truss, said recently that the British people are not in favour of economic sacrifice for zero emission. Can Ms. DeCaires analyse what is going on in her homeland for us?

Why can’t Vincent Adams who I understand currently lives in the US tell us if there is danger for Guyana in a Trump presidency. Can he tell us if Trump will win the presidency and therefore invade Venezuela which will have repercussions for Guyana? What about the OGGN on the same subject of a potential Trump victory? How does OGGN feel about the response Secretary of State, Blinken, gave the Australian Prime Minister about the mistreatment of Julian Assange. He justified the continued incarceration of Assange. Does OGGN agree with that?

In Canada where Alissa Trotz lives, the ruling Liberal Party has a minority government which stays alive through the support of one of the Opposition parties, the NDP. The NDP is headed by a Sikh. The Canadian Prime Minister has accused the Indian government of being behind the assassination of a Sikh separatist in Canada. Can Trotz analyse this complex situation for us in Guyana? Finally, Dr. J. Bulkan wants Guyana to halt oil production. She needs to tell us about rising racism and hate speeches in her home town of British Columbia.