Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 15, 2020 Editorial
The new government wants to do the right thing but goes about it in a strange way. The features of what is clearly pedestrian thinking are present at both the tactical and strategic levels. This outlook returns citizens and country to what it should be leaving behind.
Returning to the traditional sectors is not the most constructive of visions, arguably not the most positive of steps. Diversification is fine, but sugar and rice, among others, have had their time, and helped to this point of imprisoning contentment. This is an exciting and revolutionary hour, not the time for the sentimental or nostalgic; our leaders must be devoted and determined to get the most out of where the real money is, the burgeoning oil sector. Payara emerges to test the mettle of the new administration. Instead of returning loyal supporters to the fields with cutlass and punts today, we urge focusing on Payara as the standard for the future.
It is appreciated that some elections promises must be fulfilled and sugar represent a solid voting base. In politics, such realities compel poor decision making. The sugar community would be better served with alternatives, subsidies, retraining, and small business development. In Suriname’s President Santhoki’s words, involve “small and medium enterprises” from the private sector. We suggest mechanized harvesting and modernized supporting structures that empower workers, lift them up. That would be delivering to a faithful constituency. It is time to put a stop to them slaving away on the ground, continuing to ‘scratch out a living’ close to the poverty line, while keeping them trapped and beholden to political expediency.
They can be the job generators and community inspirations leading the way forward. The long-term prospects of sugar compare unfavorably to the oil possibilities at our feet. The moment must not be wasted.
The reality is that returning to the noncompetitive agricultural realms to ‘scratch out a living’ and continue the grinding back-breaking labor regimes is a mentality that condemns workers, their families, and communities to what limits, entraps, and hobbles the rest of this society with its weight. There are better ways of doing things with the traditional and this comes from working tirelessly and fearlessly to maximize first the returns from what lies beneath our feet and belongs to us lock, stock, and in every barrel below the seabed. Payara looms.
Instead of the old shortsightedness, Guyanese leaders must manifest a new profoundness that comes from deep foresight, and which results in the financially rewarding. It is why we strongly and unceasingly recommend focusing on extracting as much as could be gleaned from the abundant oil wealth first; do not retreat from that priority. It is the way to go from the get-go. The revenues gained from our oil could then be used to power those same traditional sectors, with unprecedented and fresh visions. The lucrative returns are there, we simply must summon the will to work hard to get our fair share from stubborn and greedy foreign partners. If we cannot get what is due to this country and its peoples from renegotiating that enraging contract, then we must pursue the host of other businesses and revenues that flow naturally from oil production. Payara stands as a test case of what could be. We must outthink and outwit Exxon.
The key is getting what is rightly due to Guyanese from our oil wealth, which is holding out for as much as possible, and with which there should be no pushback and no beating around the bush. We must demonstrate that we are serious. Though the going will be hard, the new Guyanese leaders and their team of advisers must not shrink from the challenges at hand. What we get from Payara can be the start to making so much more possible in the largely antiquated and wounded sugar sector.
We say let our other Third World brethren, who do not have oil in any commercial quantity exploit their agricultural lands with their labor force. We can buy their products, while we concentrate on the special gifts we have, and rise to be among the best at managing and controlling not only what we have, but what is our destiny.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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