Do not count out President Jagdeo’s climate change economy at yet!

May 27, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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President Bharrat Jagdeo deserves a great deal of credit, if only for the effort he is making to try to dig Guyana out of its problems, most of which were problems that his government did not create.
Guyana, as we know at Independence, had the potential given its natural and human resources to become the jewel of the Caribbean. However, it made the fatal mistake of putting into power a power-crazy demagogue who was more obsessed with preserving his power than with solving the problems of the Guyanese people.
It is something of a fascination that this dictator got a large section of the Guyanese people to support his nut-headed experiment called cooperative socialism.   Just how the Forbes Burnham Government intended to transform Guyana through cooperatives is still beyond comprehension.  Just where he came up with this idea from is still a mystery even though a great many of his other experiments were borrowed wholesale from the Eastern block and from his so-called socialist friends.
In Russia, Stalin was able to transform the Soviet Union in a short period of time to one of the most powerful industrial blocs in the world. This was done through a process of forced collectivism which while rushing Russia’s development forward was costly in terms of human life and suffering. The same collectivist principles were responsible for transforming China to the power it is today.
How Forbes Burnham, running a small country without any meaningful industrial base, hoped to use cooperatives to create a socialist society in Guyana is beyond explanation.  While there were cooperative efforts during the colonial period and while many villages were founded on the principle of its members collectively engaging in joint action, it is difficult to see how cooperatives could have been the vehicles to transition Guyana to a socialist economy.
By 1985 the year in which Burnham died he was boasting about how his government had predicted a two per cent growth but that the World Bank had estimated that Guyana’s economy would grow by five per cent. He did not mention of course that the economy had already been contracting and any growth would hardly have been sufficient to allow for Guyana to return to the levels it had attained prior to the crazy experiment with cooperative socialism.
By the time the PNC left power in 1992, Guyana was the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere, a far distance from where many felt it would have been prior to Independence. All manner of excuses have been given for Guyana’s humiliating status but the main one was the pursuit of a model of development that was cockeyed.
Not only did the PPP inherit a bankrupt economy in October 1992; it was also saddled with a huge debt burden, which threatened to overturn any attempt to reverse the failed communist experiment under Burnham.
Cheddi Jagan was foremost in the struggle to have this debt reduced. But the fact remains that the greatest achievement was achieved not under Cheddi Jagan but under Bharrat Jagdeo.
There were a great many persons who laughed when Cheddi in the eighties had been calling for debt relief. While they were laughing, the Guyanese people were suffering. Again they laughed when he proposed that the international banks offer debt relief.  While they laughed, they pointed out that the rules of those organizations did not allow for the banks to do so. Well they were wrong; just as how they were wrong when they fell at the feet of Burnham.
The international financial banks did offer debt relief and Guyana secured this debt relief under Bharrat Jagdeo. Had this debt relief not been pursued, and God knows why the PNC never aggressively agitate for debt relief, Guyana even with significant economic growth would not have been able to be in the position it is in today which is however unsatisfactory, much better than in any time in our history.
All of this is background to the latest initiative of the Jagdeo administration which some people, including this columnist is skeptical about.  I have always felt that all this talk about climate change is just hot air and that the Jagdeo administration is falling under the influence of power international environmental lobbies who have their own agenda.
In a later column I will discuss what I believe is that agenda.
But for the time, I will simply state that I am not a covert to the climate change bandwagon. However, I am impressed by the effort that our President is making. He is extremely passionate about this issue.
And if what he is hoping for is achieved then it will be much better than finding oil because the wealth that we will gain from literally not doing anything from our forests would be far more than if CGX struck oil.
The economic benefits, which President Jagdeo is hoping for, sounds like a fairytale. But that was said of Cheddi when he proposed debt relief by the international financial agencies?
So please, do not rule out Jagdeo as yet. It may not happen but is far more plausible than trying to achieve socialism in Guyana through cooperatives. He may yet achieve what he is after.

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