Wooing… the Diaspora

Once more into the breach!! Our indefatigable Pressie’s off in Canada doing his darndest to whip up interest in our Diaspora to show some interest in their native land – beyond telling their kids about the hard times they suffered back in the day!! He was fresh from doing the same in Houston, Texas where he attended an Oil and Gas confab with the oil majors. In Toronto, he addressed a “Canada-Guyana Business Forum” – where he complained that unlike the US, UK, the EU and other States that like to call themselves “developed” – Canada hadn’t stepped up to the crease to put their money where their mouth was!!
And your Eyewitness means that literally since Canada’s ALCAN was the multinational that exploited our bauxite at Demba for decades – paid pennies and peanuts in taxes on the ore which they shipped to their Niagara Refineries to convert into aluminium – which they sold at a premium. For good measure they had segregated housing where Guyanese weren’t permitted to darken their doors – long after sugar baron Booker’s Massa Days were done!! But no Canadian investors are biting!!
And sadly, it also doesn’t look like many Guyanese in the Diaspora are!! They ain’t repeating the history of other ethnic groups who’d preceded them and who, after making it over there, seized the opportunity to invest in their homelands! Seems to your Eyewitness there GOTTA be a substantial number of Diaspora Guyanese who’ve developed skills or know-how in various businesses who can then enrich themselves and their country by investing here!! There’s one fella your Eyewitness knows from his village who’d emigrated to Canada and worked in – and eventually ran – a mushroom farm. Your Eyewitness told him that since he knew more about growing mushrooms than the old saw – “keep them in the dark and feed them sh*t!” – why didn’t he return to Guyana and set up a farm?? “Naah,” the fella answered…”I like it in Canada!”
And that’s the general attitude Pressie must be facing abroad. The Diasporans will all snuggle up to take selfies to post on Facebook – but they ain’t coming home – even as absentee entrepreneurs!! They like it in Canada!! They don’t mind coming down to Guyana nowadays – those cash grants and the pensions for the older ones are like magnets!! But they can’t say they don’t know Guyana’s come a long way as far as amenities go!! So to say they prefer Canada is basically saying they like the cold and the racism!!
Your Eyewitness heard Pressie mention the retirement potential of Silica City for Diasporans  — with hospitals and saunas and stuff! – whose pensions and Social Security payments can make them live comfortably.
Bet they’ll say “It’s too far”!!

…the Yanks
Now that the ICJ is mulling over how to legally phrase “Essequibo is Guyana’s” , what’s gonna be the Yanks’ position?? Your Eyewitness stresses “there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies – just permanent interests”!! As he’s pointed out, 300 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude trumps our 15 billion every day!! So, in the meantime, we gotta use their chumminess – while our interests coincide – to boost our own capabilities. Up to now they’ve promised “Military Support to Security, Stability, Transition and Reconstruction Operations; Military Financing; Military Sales; International Military Education and Training; Medical Support Training and Operations; Humanitarian Assistance, Civic Action and Disaster Relief Programs and Military-to-Military Exchange/Training Programs”!
That’s quite a mouthful, innit?? We gotta take up their offer and continue building up our GDF – especially our drone capabilities!  Your Eyewitness supports – fervently – calls that have been made for a military base in our Essequibo – to which we should allow our American ally access.
But we also gotta develop settlements there!!

…big data
That to convert that MOU to locate a data centre in Berbice into a contract that’s beneficial to us is gonna take some heavyweight negotiators!!
We don’t need no repetition of the Trotman fiasco as happened back in 2016!!