Four middle aged men are sitting around a coffee table strewn with papers. It’s the holidays but they are working hard as we are helpfully informed by the Office of the President’s Facebook post.
“Today, we spent considerable time working on building out the model to support our immediate, medium and long-term development and designing a careful and considerate approach to meet the aspirations of our people. Our policies will ensure a resilient approach to managing our finances and growing wealth at every level in our society.” -His Excellency President Dr Irfaan Ali
They say a photograph is worth a thousand words and this one encapsulates a lot of what is understood to be the dynamics within the ruling party and its approach to governance.
Firstly the Vice President is apparently portrayed as the leader – in the foreground, his shirtsleeves rolled up, arms in familiar point making mode (when is he ever not?) while his finance minister and protégé leans forward listening almost enthralled. The President is scribbling something in the background. As such the choice of the image would indicate the President is comfortable to be depicted as playing second fiddle to his mentor. After all this is the party of democratic centralism and Mr Jagdeo is still its General Secretary.
The image is also indicative by who is not there. No other members of Cabinet – no unruly stallions – some of whom may feel they have important inputs into what is a highly significant – indeed a crucial meeting: nothing less than the formulation of the long term future of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.
The importance of this event cannot be overstated.
Never mind it’s four guys sitting around a coffee table and that there is not a woman in sight, nor an indigenous person nor a single young person who will have to live with these long term plans that these four guys are hashing out. Members of the opposition or civil society? We dare not even breathe their names. Nor should we raise the topic of how the National Development Strategy was crafted.
Some may question these four’s credentials to appoint themselves to this high level planning commission. At least three of them have been in government for over 20 years and look at the mess this country remains in after all their stewardship: a bankrupt sugar industry, murders and traffic deaths higher than ever, a severely challenged education system, a filthy nation from Crabwood Creek to Charity, continued blackouts and widespread poverty especially in rural and interior areas. These are all matters these individuals had decades to fix.
As for the PM, in all due respect he was in the army almost his whole life and we don’t recall him prior to his nomination producing any paper on any issue related to nation building. But we would not go so far to say he was included for the optics.
However it is the arrogance coming off this photograph that is so galling. The oil money has obviously gone to their heads and convinced them that suddenly they are geniuses. What they really are, is plain lucky. It is worth recalling that in 2015 ExxonMobil had two options for its first well here – Skipjack or Liza. It was a toss up. They chose Liza. If it had been Skipjack which in fact was dry, Exxon would have probably packed up shop and gone home. The likelihood would have been that no oil would have been discovered here up to now and these four might have been in photos sitting down with the IMF on another round of post-Covid debt restructuring.
Two wells, one decision. That is how incredibly lucky they are.
But strange things happen to people who are suddenly flush with cash. They ascribe their sudden success to their efforts and intelligence rather than dumb luck. The way the President speaks it is as if he had discovered the oil himself, always taking credit for the “explosive” growth in the economy.
The VP is very much afflicted by this mindset. He recently took credit for the expansion of the oil sector claiming, incredibly, that it was only because he was in charge that so much could have been done in such a short time and that the promised Petroleum Commission would have only delayed the progress. Does anyone dare tell him how badly he botched the auction by failing to provide proper seismic data to bidders? Compare his results to those of Suriname over the past year.
Or this refinery business which he has been pushing for years. Everyone who knows anything knows that a 30,000 b/d refinery is uneconomical due to a lack of scale and the inability to produce a variety of refined products. Is he aware that the Caribbean has become a graveyard for much larger refineries in the past decade – St Croix, Curacao, Aruba, Guaracara in Trinidad?
Additionally the building of port facilities must be considered an added cost to any such project. Thirdly refineries are as temperamental as sports cars, often exploding for little reason. Our underfunded fire service can’t even look after house fires let alone a refinery blaze. It’s silly but still the Vice President is intent on his boondoggles.
The bigger question is really a matter of confusion. In July, President Ali at the International Building Exposition referred to the “Vision 2030” which promises to transform the country into a “Green, Inclusive and Prosperous Guyana that provides a good quality of life for all its citizens” by the year 2030.
So what exactly is being planned now? This is giving us double vision although whether we the citizens will ever glimpse either of these top secret documents is another matter. One can’t help feeling they are just making it up as they go along.
The diplomats like to preach inclusivity and rightly so. It is worth remembering the PPP/C won the 2020 elections by a mere 8000 votes and has just a one seat majority in Parliament. So it is only correct that such expansive and fundamental plans require all of our input.
Four guys sitting around a coffee table. Welcome to democracy Guyanese style.
