NO researcher can complain that there weren’t sufficient materials in the political realm in Guyana last year to write a book on political degeneracy.

For this purpose, I will describe political degeneracy as politics driven by hate so that Guyana becomes synonymous with the PPP and everything worthwhile, and every accomplishment must be denied and be caricatured because the government is hated.

If the researcher examines 2023, then he/she will find that there is a school of PPP haters that exists outside of the mainstream opposition parties that is prepared to reject and deny everything that the government does even to the point of morbid barefacedness.

The enumeration will take in hundreds of examples. As 2023 began, seven squatters at Mocha were refusing to move to make way for a new highway that will ease the burden of hundreds of thousands of drivers that face congestion on the only highway on the East Bank of Demerara (EBD). Anyone that lives in this country and cannot accept that Guyana needs more than one highway on the EDB is a person that is completely idiotic.

The seven squatters were demanding from government 595 million Guyana dollars before they move, which they claimed were the value of their assets. Seven families squatting on state land have assets that total more than half a billion dollars. If they are so financially endowed then commonsense dictates that with such wealth, what were they doing on squatting lands? It was the first time in world history that upper middle class folks built houses on government reserve.

When the government forcefully removed those occupiers, there were humans in and out of Guyana that sided with the squatters and called the government cruel. Some of those folks live in the US where this week in California, a revered park that was a symbol of the hippie age (the counter-culture era) was demolished by the police and several of the squatters who have lived there for decades were arrested.

The park was destroyed to make way for student dorms at the University of California at Berkley.

A Guyanese, Professor Percy Hintzen who has lived for 40 years at Berkley writes letters in the Guyanese newspapers critical of the government, so I guess we will see his condemnation of what the police did in California.

Last year in Guyana, we had more experts in the oil industry than the Middle East and when you examine all of them, they have no training in petroleum engineering or the oil industry and they live abroad.

They demanded in the entire year of 2023, two things. One set wanted Guyana to get out of the fossil fuel industry. The other insisted that the government drag Exxon to the table to renegotiate the original oil contract.

But these were not two manifestations of patriotism. These were not nationalist Guyanese who care about the future of Guyana. These were political vultures who are so politically driven by anti-government hatred that any issue will be exploited to get at the government.

Both types of critics know that Guyana cannot force Exxon to the table because of international realpolitik, and that oil production is a priceless asset that will secure that comfortable future that has so long eluded Guyana.

But they don’t care as long as there is a situation in Guyana that they can use as propaganda fodder against the government.

One of the anti-oil lobbyists, Dr. Janet Bulkan has switched from forestry to international relations.
She appealed to the OAS two years ago to intervene to stop oil production in Guyana.

The lady has suddenly become an expert in international relations. She concluded that Guyana should not have gone to St. Vincent and the Argyle Declaration was a loss for Guyana and a victory for Venezuela.

So last year it was the Mocha squatters, the Mahdia inferno, the oil industry and the Argyle Declaration that were the gold mines for the anti-government haters.

But in that same year, in the month of April, the report of the commission of inquiry into the March 2020 general election was made public. That report has become a valuable, historic document.

It now constitutes a historical document. But the anti-government school so driven by hate chose to ignore it completely.

Last year, the co-owner of the Stabroek News, Isabelle Decaires visited Guyana in April. She has referred to Guyana as flawed democracy because she disagreed with the National Resource Fund; she criticised the President’s choice of clothes; she rejected trade relations with Saudi Arabia.

In April, she ignored the election report but wrote a letter in her newspaper in which she noted: “The clear symptoms of a city in decay.” The imagination can be a dangerous thing.