Dear Editor,
The country, viewed from abroad, continues to live in interesting times. The juridical and legalistic seem to have dominated since the coalition victory.
The SOCU/SARU issues, the Gecom chairmanship, and recently, the declaration by Mr Jagdeo that he is going to file private criminal charges, are perhaps the most talked about. But there are sub-plots such as the Deputy Solicitor General issue, the naming of Senior Counsel and the appointment of the Chancellor of the Judiciary and Chief Justice, plus the parking meter contract which have found prominent place in the newspapers. Many of the issues seem to hinge on interpretations of law and procedure.
For a country known for its lawyers, one would have thought that the interpretation of laws, and the drafting of new ones to fill any gaps, could have been speedy and effective. But the suspicion seems to have arisen that, in prosecuting past misdeeds, there is lack of will on the part of the coalition government that has emboldened the PPP to threaten legal action. There is also the reminder that nowhere in the history of the bitter opponents that have alternated rule of our country, has any successor government prosecuted the members of the previous. One recalls the nineteen sixties entente between Burnham and Jagan. There was no pursuit of the ‘terrorists’ of the racial conflict. When The PPP returned to power in the nineties there were no arrests or trials despite its prior accusations. The Walter Rodney matter was hardly followed up as a matter of urgency by the PPP then. The Rodney Commission of Inquiry seemed timed to bring shame and disrepute as part of the 2015 election manoeuvres. So, as some have suggested, the Pradoville, Nicil and other matters will come to fruition in a moment to coincide with the elections of 2020.
Difficult, then, to comprehend the factors at work. And comprehensible, then the reports of popular unease.
What has emerged clearly though is that the discovery of oil is going to change the financial fortunes of the government and people.
Living in a country full of exiles from oil rich countries like Congo-Brazzaville and Chad we follow the news in Sudan and Equatorial Guinea, but are conscious that our own government contains people and planners who will avoid the ‘gold shout’ mentality and corruption that has kept a majority in those countries strapped to the poverty lines. We need to avoid the secret contracts, inadequate consultation and mistakes that arise therefrom, so that the development will be more orderly than Venezuela’s or more integrated and coherent than Trinidad’s.
About thirty or more years ago, President Burnham had announced, if I remember, the finding of oil in the Rupununi. We have had to wait two generations and another location for the hope to become reality.
The big question now is, who will we trust to manage the find ‒ the enormous revenues and the huge contracts that will be possible will have to be entrusted to the successors of the current APNU+AFC coalition, whether it be the same parties in another configuration or a re-ethnicised PPP.
In a country where racial politics is the
historical fact, the nation must be prepared for the fallout, positive or not, of the prosperity that is promised. Oil revenues could, as in other places, exacerbate ethnic and regional tensions. Nigeria is an example. Or it could, as in the United Arab Emirates, lead to a tighter fusion of the national components around a common project.
The moment for a government of national unity, made up of people of all groups, is now. We need to prepare not only the laws and budgets, but the national will. The recent distractions suggest that the national government may have to be based on something beyond or other than a composition of political parties. The PPP is not interested. It wants to go down fighting. Talk of multi-party combines has been present in all forces since the seventies. It never worked in the eighties and nineties. Unless we find a new formula, what oil will bring could be, in different or similar ways, worse than what we now try to manage.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
