Well… there you have it!! Speaking to the country on our commemoration of Enmore Martyrs’ Day, Pres. Ali announced he was gonna “Make Sugar Great Again” – MASUGRA!! Your Eyewitness thinks the acronym MASUGRA has a nice ring to it and should now roll off the tongue of every red-blooded Guyanese out there!! Now, dear reader, in case you think your Eyewitness is making some strong stuff – please disabuse yourself of that notion!! Yes Siree Bob – your Eyewitness thinks we can realise MASUGRA!!
And to do so, he’ll invoke that old analogy he rakes up every now and then about whether a hammer is still the same hammer after first its handle was replaced and – after a while – its head!! Get it?!! Pressie didn’t say GuySuCo gotta be producing ONLY sugar again – gotcha!! Did you know that Toyota started out making fabrics?? That’s right!! They were weaving fabrics when the owner – Toyoda – invented the world’s first automatic loom. So, you’d think he’d keep on doing what everyone thought he knew best!! Wrong!! What those who thought that way assumed was that he was a fabric weaver – rather than an INNOVATOR!!
And so it was that after WWII, when Japan had to rebuild from scratch, the company decided to produce motor cars! And not even for its own market – which was practically non-existent – but for America that had just defeated it!! Their mos’ prized asset was a great workforce – they just had to be producing what the world wanted – then cars!! If you can’t beat ‘em – join ‘em!! So, what Pressie realised was that GuySuCo’s greatest asset wasn’t really sugar but the people that produced sugar for years – on land that’s unique with its drainage and irrigation system!! It can produce what the world wants NOW!!
So Pressie’s strategy for MASUGRA is “crop diversification, skills diversification, income diversification!!” For the first – GuySuCo could now start cultivating crops like rice, corn, and cassava – as well as livestock operations and agro-processing because the inputs are already here. And the second – skills diversification – would lead to hard-working field workers retrained to produce new crops that the world wanted!! Many don’t realise that GuySuCo is also a MANUFACTURING company – and its factory workers are uniquely positioned to provide engineering services in whatever industry we choose to get into!!
Some of these new industries could be placed in the hands of the workers – by leasing the land or financing new manufacturing industries – thus accomplishing Pressie’s third strategic goal – income diversification!! This is what Lee Kwan Yu did with what he inherited in Singapore – to turn it from “Third World to First”!!!
Can MASUGRA be accomplished? Sure, it can!!
…war
Some are wondering why Israel chose to attack Iran. Well, duh!! Remember for countries there are “no permanent friends or permanent enemies – just permanent interests?!!” And the continued existence of the country should rate rather high on its list of interests, shouldn’t it?? The leaders of Iran have declared that their great enemies are the US – “the Great Satan” – and its surrogate in the region – Zionist Israel!! Folks seemed to’ve forgotten that the present Iranian regime is a successor to the one that overthrew the Shah – who was besties with the West, including Israel!!
So, both the US and Israel would see their interests being threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran!! And we arrive at the present scenario unfolding – with the US having rather (implausible) deniability in the mission. The fly in the ointment is that Israel’s led by a fella who’s playing with a weak hand and is gambling for domestic survival.
He’ll almost certainly overplay his hand – and therein lies the danger for the world!!
…schoolchildren happy
Min. Of Education, Manickchand, announced that because of General Elections scheduled for Sept 1st, the looong August Holidays gotta be lengthened some mo’ – school buildings gonna be used as polling stations. Guess who’s gonna be happier than pigs in doody?!!
