…or political distortions?
There’s this tendency to import ideas from the natural sciences into the social sciences to give the latter, the hard-earned legitimacy of the former. Look how Karl Marx huffed Newton’s “forces” of physics into his “dialectical materialism” that our independence leaders lapped up! This thought flashed into your humble Eyewitness’s mind as he pondered the role of the US IN Guyana’s affairs.
Wasn’t it Einstein who’d described the effect of massive bodies on others in their vicinity? Space-time’s distorted and the trajectory of smaller bodies are controlled without any effort on the part of the former. And so it’s been with the US and us – all the US has to do is be there and we’re influenced. This came out clearly in the massive coverage in all the media of the departure of this fella from the US
Embassy, Brian Hunt.
Hunt wasn’t even an Ambassador – he was the fella next in line and stepped into the gap while the US State Department took its sweet time to fill a vacancy in a country that’s obviously not too high on their diplomatic hit parade. After all, Brian Hunt’s previous stint was in Papua New Guinea with its 800 tribes and extant cannibalism.
The traditional view of International Relations is that the big powers influence little powers either by military might or by providing aid. In the case of the US after the 1960s and its CIA-facilitated ethnic riots, there haven’t been any military excursions here. So what was interesting about Hunt’s 15 minutes in the limelight was how little aid the US’s been providing and yet its influence was so massive that a second or third-level diplomat practically controlled our governments’ agendas.
Just going by memory, your Eyewitness can think of the US5M Chinese loan for CJIA’s expansion, two ferries, a Convention Centre etc…India’s USM loan for the Cricket Stadium, USM for the in-limbo Specialty Hospital, USM for a bypass road. The height of chutzpah was reached when Hunt advised that Guyana needs some help in IT and IGNORED that India had just provided USM to fund an IT Centre of Excellence!
But hey!! Under Hunt’s tenure, the US did provide more than 20,000 visitors visas in 2015 to Guyanese. Going by the US0 fee, that has to be worth US,000,000!
The effect on regime change was just a bonus for the Guyanese people, nuh?
…on corruption
This phenomenon called “corruption” has been given a whole lot of play since independence. Even before then, the PPP’d been called out on some road to Bartica called Del Conte or something. The funny thing is what was normal practice by the British suddenly became “corruption” under the locals. You can’t blame some of the latter for being confused, when they got into office.
Take the award of contracts for Sea Defence or conservancies and such like…There was never any bidding, they were just handed out to British firms. Or the agencies for importing and selling to the Government everything from motor cars to sardines. These were just doled out to the locals who were willing to be the “compradors”.
Anyhow Prezzie accepts we should weed out corruption, but says it takes two to tango. But if he’s already paying his bureaucrats for doing their jobs, shouldn’t he fire THEM for demanding or taking bribes to do so? We also agree PPP Govt contracts shouldn’t be “state secrets” and should be made public.
So, how about suggesting to Min Bulkan that his Town Clerk should make the Meter Contract public? ..
…peddlers
According to the local rep of Fedders Lloyd, as soon as he heard his company had been blacklisted by
the World Bank for bribery in 2010 in some African country, he resigned.
Shouldn’t those who facilitated Fedders Lloyd in that same time period here, also resign?
