In a matter of a handful of days we – Guyana, that is – will find ourselves playing host to a business forum (CIF 2024) the significance of which transcends the geographic limitations of our country, including the boundaries of our own domestic ambitions and aspirations, extending first into the wider geographic space that we refer to as the Caribbean Community and beyond that, to much of the rest of the international community, and that recent and exalted recognition of the geographic space known as Guyana, arrived with a blinding speed and has yet to register, in all probability, in the remoter regions of our country.
To describe the present condition in our country as transformational is to indulge in considerable reflection, the frenetic effort at a physical makeover manifesting itself in consequences that are neither desirable, nor, necessarily, particularly comforting, though it is difficult to determine – at least in the immediate term, where we are headed or whether we are comfortable with where we think we are headed.
A great deal continues to be said and written, not least on the subject of the various prognoses on where we are headed or where we think we want to go. The ‘we’ here describe a clique that goes beyond the political elite, embracing, as well, other tiers of our country that have cultivated segmented ambitions, all of which we see as deriving from the outcomes of a range of ambitions. Historians will doubtless argue that these are ‘interesting’ times in which to live, times in which we are witness both to the realization of fanciful dreams and ‘living out’ earlier assessments of where we might have been heading even as we contemplate the condition in which we had existed. What is unquestionable is that our ‘oil fortune’ has allowed for excursions down pathways that had not, hitherto, been even contemplated by those who had grown accustomed to their circumstances.
Everything, ranging from political behaviour and outlook to ambitions, at the levels of the individual, the family and the other groupings of various types (and here we do not exclude the political groupings) have become transformed. Particularly, perceptions of political power and its significance. As a nation, our ‘petro power’ has served not just (in some though decidedly not in all instances) to lift the burden of persistent poverty that had been an essential element of our existence, but in a host of instances, to significantly extend the perimeters of ambitions.
Unsurprisingly, there have been, as well, transformations in our perceptions of the significance of the political process and of political power. These days, one feels, there has been an enhanced significance in popular perceptions of political power, what it represents, in real terms. And the kinds of changes that may well be visited on our actual existence as the inevitable wider transformations in our society occur.
Here, it may well be precipitate to extend our thoughts on the likely outcomes of our present condition down a road that may well have its own share of pot holes and which may inflict on us thoughts that metamorphose into expectations that kill such uplifting realities that may well be part of our eventual legacy… as a nation, that is.
