ALL Guyanese and all post-colonial people, especially in the Caribbean, who know about Guyana are happy that a post-colonial country of non-White people is becoming rich and modern because it has oil. That is the story that Guyana is now basking in.
Many years, on the Subryanville seawall, I ran into a man who had an important job with the government of President Jagdeo at the time. His name is Manniram Prashad. At the time, I was a daily columnist at Kaieteur News and he was very big in the government, but Manny and I always had a pleasant, cordial, respected relationship.
We were talking about Guyana and he asked me what I think will happen to Guyana if it should discover oil. That was all he said. He knew something, but I don’t think given his role in government he would have opened up to me. If he is reading this, I hope he remembers that encounter. I do. I always remember it now. I am seeing what oil is doing for Guyana.
With our limited development, the mere thought of Guyana being a petro-dollar nation would have excited any Guyanese. Here we are today; oil has brought modernisation and development. But there is something else oil has brought. When Manniram posed the question to me, neither he nor I would ever have imagined that oil would have brought things unpleasant, unpalatable, and pessimistic, but it has.
The argument in this newspaper article is best suited for an academic journal. I don’t have the time or resources to pursue that kind of research. For now a few notes will have to suffice. Frankly, I don’t think the notes below will suffice. We are talking about a complex situation. The story of what oil has brought to Guyana begins on Tuesday, March 3, 2020 is one of the most important dates in the entire history of this country. It is the story of oil and the two unwanted things it brought.
Scores of political analysts in and outside of Guyana argued that what played out from March 3, 2020, was a zero-sum fight for political power because whoever controls Guyana will have oil money at their disposal. Politically, it is a sound proposition. But one has to see the zero-sum mentality from within the PNC, WPA, and AFC because they lost the battle to control an oil economy and they fought to have it.
What political analysts have not concentrated on since March 3 is the angle of class antagonism that oil brought too. This is a more recondite subject to elaborate on than the plausibility of the theory of zero-sum political struggle. In a nutshell, what oil has brought is political hatred coming from the political classes and class hatred coming from certain social classes.
Oil has brought hate to Guyana that, in my entire political life of 60 years of activism, I have never seen Macbethian poison in our political culture as I see it today. I lived through anti-government passion against Presidents Burnham, Hoyte, Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan, Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar, David Granger but I have never seen anti-government passion so filled with hate as I have witnessed since 2020 right down to the present. Unfortunately, perhaps, Guyana’s best president, Irfaan Ali, is the recipient of such mind-boggling hate.
I did a Sunday column two weeks ago in which I announced that I have given thought to ending at the beginning of 2027, 38 years of column-writing. It has been a long journey in which I touched on everything under the sun, and I felt it was time to call it George and spend time under the sun with Janet Kissoon while holding an umbrella.
I received many requests from people I respect asking me to continue, and the truth is what I see today in the opposition parties, in civil society, in the media, and from people who belong to certain social classes, I am seriously thinking of going beyond 2026. I want to do it for my country. There is hate all over this country and it is pouring out with force, as when the waves lash the seawall.
Yesterday was Tuesday, October 27. Look at Kiskadee Watch, Kaieteur News, Village Voice and opposition comments on Azruddin Mohamed’s behaviour. A man so drowning in criminal conspiracies that he deserved to be ostracised is given open embrace by people with anti-government passion that should be described as pure hate. This is the macabre situation that I have never seen before in 60 years of social activism. Space has run out, but there is so much to say about this ubiquitous hate that we owe it to family, friends and country to fight it.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
