Dear Editor,
Guyana oil, like timber, forest, and gold need nationalist leaders who love their people, educate them, empower their best and brightest, and do not put them on a sailboat to foreign shores. Such great leaders promote peace and prosperity for their own people, and see the people as turning a common wheel of good health and happiness, not aggrandizing the fortunes of the exploiters.
Now come the questions, as politicians salivate for the portending wealth and as some may imagine, a pie in the sky according to Russian promises:
Who will own and control the oil revenues?
Will there be a production share for Guyana?
Who will own and control the offshore and onshore infrastructure?
Will there be guaranteed or quota employment for Guyanese?
Who will manage the enterprise?
In the end, how fast will Guyana grow and does Guyana have the complementary resources to sustain the required growth rate implied by the benefits from its natural resources? Will Guyanese leave the west and go north? Or fold their hands as natural resources are nibbled away year after year?
We gave away the country’s telecommunications to Atlantic Tele-Network in Connecticut. We were lured into surrendering electricity, only to learn that foreign investors do not come to Guyana to help Guyanese, they come to help themselves and their shareholders.
We do not see value in government ownership. Only the Saudis stick to their philosophies and beliefs. Our jaws dropped when the US government took over GM and made it profitable. There is a lesson to learn and follow.
The Guyanese exodus will continue unless we have peace and security at home as a precondition for national prosperity. Guyanese could become miniaturized to a critical mass that is not sustainable, as the native peoples of South America discovered slowly.
Agriculture and land reforms could play a key role in sustaining Guyana’s redevelopment and prosperity. Farms are factories and money grows on trees. Industrialization, a pie in the sky, has not happened under the PNC or the PPP’s manifestos to the nation.
Gold, silver and diamonds in the hand have not brought Guyana to its desired level of development and prosperity. Guyana oil may be all that it would take to push Guyana faster down a slippery slope of no return, unless critical questions are answered with a will to make Guyana prosperous again from the ground up. Sincere leadership would be required.
Yours faithfully,
Ganga Ramdas
Lincoln University
