Dear Editor,
Paul Nehru Tennassee, former President of the Democratic Labour Movement (DLM) in the 1980s and early 1990s, at public meetings and in his writings had suggested that Guyana establish a corporation, calling it the Guyana Essequibo Corporation , as part of a strategy to deal with the resolution of the Guyana-Venezuela controversy, so Guyana would develop an enduring new pole of development and fulfil its continental destiny. Some of the points he outlined in a published 1996 booklet were as follows: 1) The Guyanese government and the private sector should be major shareholders of the corporation. 2) A core group should be brought together by inviting the participation of governments and private sectors from Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname. 3) Subsequently, investors should be invited from the rest of the world. 4) Guyanese at home and abroad should be stakeholders by allotting all adult Guyanese an acre of land. 5)The corporation should be mandated to promote mining, forestry and ecotourism and establish two free trade zones, possibly in Lethem and Matthews Ridge. 6) Infrastructural work should be developed to ensure easy access to Venezuela and Brazil and to build a city (EL Dorado) with a view over the long run to relocating the capital from the coast to a highland area. 7) The State of Guyana must at all times hold the rights to Guyana’s “subsoil.”
I strongly recommend that Guyanese should be given ownership of our land space considering that the present generations are descendants of conquest, slavery, and indentureship. We do not have to go to Britain to seek reparations. We can have it done in Georgetown and we can do it now.
A piece of ownership of our patrimony is a good idea! We could develop this into new dynamics.
Paul and I worked closely together in 1968-69 and again in 1979-96 on Guyana. I accompanied him to Cuidad Guayana in the State of Bolívar before the 1985 elections, where we campaigned among Guyanese living there. He later approached President Caldera at Miraflores to grant amnesty to undocumented Guyanese so that their children could go to school. Both Paul and I were impressed with the development in that city and the work of the Corporation Venezolana de Guayana (CVG).
Can you imagine President Granger announcing at Guyana’s 50th anniversary in May 2016 that all Guyanese at home and abroad will be given one acre of land in the Essequibo? We all will have a real stake in Guyana. Be sure that not only 50,000 Guyanese will arrive next May, but 100,000 and more for such an announcement! Patriot, Dave Martin, will then sing ‘We now have more than a blade of grass’ ‒ or something like that!
Yours faithfully,
Joseph Ragnauth
