The future as we have it today

I got several e-mails and telephone calls about my Friday viewpoint. There are those who thought that it didn’t encapsulate the graphic points of Guyana’s failure under the present government. The criticism made is that a more sustained argument could have been offered to counteract the promise of the future that the little dictators made to the Guyanese graduates who returned home. I am in total agreement. What follows here then are more notes to my Friday piece.
Readers should be reminded that Friday’s essay was a response to criticism of the media at an official address to returning graduates. As carried by this newspaper, the graduates were told that “some sections of the media are just negative …they want to snatch away the future from all of you and from this country…” These were strong words indeed. But looked at from another angle, it is an expression of defeat on the part of the Government. How could “some sections” of the media deny young graduate their space in their own country if you have a government that is performing and laying the groundwork for the future? Is this a confession that “some sections” of the media are so powerful that they could get into the minds of young people and deceive them about the progress the government has accomplished.
One really wonders what goes through the mind of these dictators. Can’t they see the contradictions in what they say and it exposes them as superficial thinkers. Let’s see if the following makes sense. The graduates were reminded that ordinary people are not listening to “those sections” of the media and are just going about their business. Well if this is so, why have the dictators followed a pattern of derogating “those sections” of the media in almost all their public addresses?
There isn’t an instance where they have failed to mention “those sections of the media.” So if people are ignoring these media houses, how then can these very institutions “snatch away” the future of young people? Any analysis of this delivery to those graduates would show that the dictators are saying in one breath not to worry about the bowler because he is not good and at the same time warning the batsman that he is facing a powerful bowler. If someone wrote that speech for the Leviathan, he/she should go back to school.
Let us look at the present to see if we can predict the future. It is important to quote what the elected tyrants said. “I find more and more people going about their stuff, trying to get more furniture from courts, getting that house lot and trying to accumulate the little bit more money to build their house.”
The dictators see Guyana through lenses that are uncommon in Guyana. They see a future while the citizens do not. For the past six years public servants’ salary increase has not moved beyond six percent. Funny how you can accumulate savings which are not indexed to inflation! It wasn’t “those sections” of the media that observed that Guyana has the highest charge per kilowatt in South and North America. It was the Chairman of the IDB on a visit to Guyana who made that remark. How solid is the future of a country when from poor to rich steal electricity because it is not affordable?
Where are the house lots mentioned above? Were any of the graduates asked if they need a piece of land to build a home and if they had said yes, where would they have received it? Certainly not by the CARICOM Secretariat, where 103 acres of prime real estate was sold to a businessman at $5M per acre. Now, what future these graduates have when their country’s resources are given away by those who preach to them that there is a future in Guyana for them? Will these graduates remain in Guyana? The pattern and statistics are not encouraging. The World Bank reported that 82 percent of Guyanese with tertiary education leave this country.
Those “sections of the media” have to be more persuasive and powerful than the Head of State to influence these people to migrate. Let’s end with one stratum of the Guyanese society that will have no future. The school leavers who looked to Crithlow Labour College for social elevation. Come to think of it, the fascists are right. The ordinary citizen just goes about his/her business. The political elites like that. It gives the little dictators enough time to destroy the future of Guyana.