Dear Editor,
I have been reading, writing and analyzing a lot this year. I have also been in and out of Guyana, Nigeria, Namibia and the UK this year. I returned to Guyana on the 14th November via British Airways and LIAT. On the 24th November, Ras Leon Saul visited me and asked me in a relaxed way this question, “From outside, what do you think of Guyana / how does it look to you / wah bout the Granger administration / yo tink they can win de nex election?”
The question was brutal so I paused for a while. I then said to him, “the people of the Caribbean are going to bed hungry”. I reminded him of a PNC slogan of 1962: “not a man, woman or child will go to bed hungry”. I followed up by saying to him that since CARICOM was formed we have had only economists as Secretaries General of CARICOM (Fred Cozier, William Demas, Allister McIntyre, Kurleigh King, Roderick Rainford, Edwin Carrington, Lolita Applewhaite and Irwin LaRocque) and all are ‘no good’ – none of them understand the keys to wealth. Ras Saul concurred with every sentence I uttered. CARICOM has contributed to hunger and poverty of the Caribbean people today.
At the back of my mind, as Ras Saul and I spoke, were two recent conversations. The first was with a lady on the LIAT flight from Barbados to Guyana. The second with a lady scientist who sometimes travels to Trinidad. I spent two hours at Gatwick Airport, London, and eight and a half hours from London to Barbados equal ten and a half hours. I was well fed on British Airways from London to Barbados: lunch was rice and curry chicken.
I spent four hours in Barbados Airport and two hours on the 7.30-9.30pm flight from Barbados to Guyana equal six hours. LIAT offered us a 175 ml cup of coffee, tea, Sprite or Coke. The lady on the LIAT flight initiated our conversation on hunger – ladies are sensitive to feeding and food. Hunger is raging from the middle class people downwards throughout CARICOM because so much food for the Caribbean people is imported and obtained from loans and grants of money from “outside”. CARICOM Secretaries General negotiate loans and grants because they have never farmed and used the produce of that farm to feed their families. Also, loans and grants from “outside” are received to balance all CARICOM governments’ budgets.
A few days after my LIAT flight, I ran into the lady scientist. She remarked to me that ‘in the old days’ peanuts were offered on the flight from Guyana to Trinidad but that has now stopped. Neither LIAT nor CARICOM employ leaders to think of peanut and rice farms to feed travellers. Thinking of farms to feed Caribbean travellers will arrest hunger in CARICOM. Our leaders need to get back to the farms and encourage LIAT to do farming for prosperity. Loans and grants of money are jumbies that facilitate corruption and traitors.
The key to satiation is science and technology. A Secretary General of CARICOM should be a person understanding science and the applications of science. Guyana doesn’t have Ministers of Technology with the ability to deliver satiation.
When I am inside Guyana I like the new cleanliness of Georgetown and the sense of being. I don’t like the newspapers and what they put out as ‘news’. The media in Guyana is into ‘put-down’ news. The media in the UK stimulates debate. I think the APNU+AFC will win the next election because of the loans and grants from USA, Britain and Canada that keep our middle and lower classes hungry and poor, dejected and weak and yearning for democracy. There is a saying that the art of getting rich is the art of making your neighbour poor.
Yours faithfully,
Ras Dalgettie I
