Introduction
I will resume the piece on Getting the work done next week to allow me in today’s column to address the outpouring of anger and hurt expressed by politicians, columnists, letter writers and contributors in the print and social media over an article in the New York Times one week ago. The title of the article was “The $20 billion Question for Guyana”.
The writer Clifford Krauss was considered by many as condescending and superficial and even those who saw his style as parody thought it was inappropriate relative to the seriousness of the topic. One Minister went so far as to call for the rejection of the article while one blogger suggested that Krauss should not be allowed back in Guyana. So much for freedom of expression and forward thinking in Guyana.
No one has so far been able to dispute the principal thrust of the article and I found it amusing that while some have questioned the figure of US$20 billion in oil revenues, an article by the Government’s Department of Public Information (DPI) cites the same figure in almost identical context.