The President went to China and suddenly you’d think he sold away our dear old Mudland. This was against the flurry of stories about the Chinese coming in with their wads of (American) cash to inveigle us poor and huddled masses to WILLINGLY enter into a new colonial arrangement. We forget that, in the first go-around, we also invited them in willingly – whether in India or Africa.
Anyhow, the Chinese have made no secret of their ambitions – they’re to make their “Middle Kingdom” pip the US as the TOP GUN within a few decades – by hook or by crook! Their trillion-dollar Belt & Road (B&I) global project is their main strategic salvo –er…investment — outside of their military build-up. Another line of attack has been the offering of low-cost loans within the B&I aegis. Post WWII, the Breton Woods financial institutions of the IMF and the World Bank – controlled by the US – had been saying for decades that developing countries needed to improve their infrastructure – bridges, highways, ports etc – to get their economies moving upwards. But they weren’t providing the loans!!
So up comes the Chinese with the $3.3 TRILLION they’ve accumulated in American dollars – by becoming the workshop of the Americans!! – to dangle in front of us. What are we to do?? Look a gift horse in the mouth? Well, maybe we should – and who’s to say that the Ali Administration hasn’t been doing that?? After all, they had to read about several projects across the world where countries went in over their heads – like in Sri Lanka with that Port – and the lender China had to take over the project. Isn’t that what all lending institutions do? Didn’t we go bankrupt under Burnham, when he borrowed and couldn’t pay, and had to be bailed out by the IMF – with their “conditionalities” that squeezed the life out of the economy??
This isn’t rocket science…and it has nothing to do with the Chinese. If you’re gonna borrow for a project, you better ensure your cash flow’s gonna be there to service the loan – as per its terms. For instance, when our physical and ethnic twin Ghana, across the Atlantic, got into financial trouble after they struck oil in 2007, it was because they floated bonds they couldn’t service when their oil production wasn’t up to projections. Now, we’ve been dealing with the Chinese deep pockets for decades – think Skeldon and CJIA, so it’s more than being condescending that the PNC is accusing us of borrowing too much from China.
Whatever concerns we have about the Exxon contract, at least we know that the proven reserves gonna cover our debt!!
…free and fair elections
Some people and institutions are unfortunately so stuck in the past that they refuse to look around to appreciate that the world has changed, and they are in effect tilting at windmills. The PNC falls in this category in Guyana. When Burnham launched the PNC, the PPP of Jagan not only had a large plurality of its ethnic supporters, but they were distributed more evenly across the country, so that they would win any FPTP election.
The system was changed to PR to suit the PNC’s demographics, Burnham got into power and then rigged elections to neutralize the PPP’s numerical advantage. But all of that is long gone!! The PNC won a free and fair election in 2015!! And they did so by forming a political vehicle that appealed outside their constituency. In 2020, the PPP won because of PNC’s missteps, and they also appealed for crossover votes.
Yet the present lot of wannabe PNC leaders wanna ignore the crossovers who were alienated by Granger’s spite.
Go figure!!
…City Hall
The restoration of City Hall proceeds apace – costing billions and billions. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to tear down the entire derelict structure and rebuild it from “scratch”?? We can still do Gothic, can’t we??
