A home is probably the first substantial asset an average person is gonna own. After slavery, in a remarkable act of asserting their humanity, the newly- freed Africans pooled their hard-earned savings to buy entire abandoned plantations on which to build their own houses!! “Hard-earned” wasn’t just a figurative expression, cause no bank offered them loans or mortgages. “Hard-earned” is because they were PAID for work done only AFTER they’d completed their assigned tasks for FREE, as “apprentices”. Many of the indentured labourers who succeeded them on the plantations followed suit with home ownership as w wealth.
Well, in Guyana, there’s a big brouhaha – not a DEBATE – about who’s getting all the WEALTH in Guyana. Now, this wasn’t unexpected – cause after two centuries of fighting for scraps from the master’s table, when we hit that unexpected oil bonanza, $$$ signs appeared before everybody’s eyes!! Hadn’t we seen what oil $$$ could do for previously poverty-stricken backwater colonies?? Think the entire Arabian Peninsula!! Especially Abu Dhabi, with its skyscrapers literally scraping the skies and its artificial beaches giving our Caribbean ones more than a run for their money!!
But we gotta be real – if Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither was Abu Dhabi!! Their oil started flowing back in the late 1930s, but, with careful planning, they started transforming their country only in the sixties – over TWO DECADES LATER!! Now, this doesn’t mean we gotta wait two decades for our folks to share in our new wealth!! But to listen to the Opposition, after four years, we should all be tooling around in Lamborghinis!!
Even if your Eyewitness is exaggerating a tad, giving US$5000 ANNUALLY TO EVERY HOUSEHOLD IN GUYANA – all 230,000 of them – would amount to US$1,150,000,000 a year!! What’ll be left to develop the country??
Was that the way Abu Dhabi did it?? No siree Bob!! Since they were living in a desert, where there wasn’t even water – in fact they struck oil while looking for water!! – they FIRST built all the infrastructure that it takes to live like the rich folks up north!! Yep…the Europeans and the Yanks were THEIR models too!!
But isn’t this what the PPP government’s doing?? Just take a walk in your village or ward – ANY VILLAGE OR WARD- and you’ll stumble across some bridge, road, building or factory going up!! Not to mention mega bucks being pumped into agriculture etc to short circuit that dreaded Dutch Disease!!!
But the individual family hasn’t been left behind. The Government announced that a basic unit of wealth was made possible for over 30,000 families by giving them house lots – plus providing the wherewithal to construct houses!! With over 50% going to African-Guyanese and 7000 to women!! What discrimination??
…on arbitral award
Oct 3rd was the 125th anniversary of the international Arbitral Award that delineated our present boundary with Mad Maduro’s Venezuela. It was declared to be a “Full, Perfect and Final Settlement”, but due to the usual opportunism of Venezuelan politicians, they’ve resurrected their claims to annex our Essequibo. They insisted that Venezuelans weren’t on the Arbitral Commission – but avoided mentioning that it was they who chose to be represented by an American law firm that deployed the Venezuelan Severo Mallet-Prevost to the Arbitral panel!!!! The same Mallet-Prevost who posthumously claimed the Brits and Ruskies had colluded to screw the Venezuelans!!
This was after THEY invoked the Yanks’ Monroe Doctrine in its first deployment against the European Powers – here Britain. It’s more than ironic that today they complain about the Yanks interfering in their affairs!
Anyhow, we’ve taken the controversy to the ICJ; but we know that Maduro will reject their decision if it’s for us – as is expected.
We gotta prepare to give the bullies a black eye!!
…with what we get
Former PM Sam Hinds’s comment that we might’ve had problems absorbing more funds from the bad deal the PNC signed with Exxon seems to have set off a firestorm of indignation!! He just wants us to quit squabbling!!
