The census-taker, the dog and snap elections

Jul 03, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

During the heyday of “SKA” which preceded reggae, one popular tune was “Census-taker.” The census-taker couldn’t do his work properly because the owner came out and loose the dog and the census-taker ran away.
In Guyana, there was no dog but the question that must be asked is; in a country where the human resource base is extremely low, how reliable is the 2012 census? For example, no census-taker came to my home. And surely there must be many more like me.
The barest information has been released. We know that the population dropped. But the figures do not seem right to me. Between 2002 and 2012 there was a drop of only three and a half thousand persons. Frankly, I don’t believe this. The World Bank says that 82 percent of persons with tertiary training migrate. The US Embassy says 14 persons left Guyana per day and this was three years ago.
This number of fourteen was only for the US. What about Canada which five years ago offered Guyanese self-sponsorship and there were mass applications? Antigua’s population consists of one Guyanese for every five Antiguans. Guyanese are overflowing in Surinam and Trinidad. I cannot believe that against this background the population of this country dropped over a two year period by just over 3000 citizens.
The figures for individual regions are very small too. And this just does not sound accurate. Take Essequibo. I don’t have the figures as yet but just a small part of Region Three – Wakenaam – has been losing people steadily in large numbers.
I wrote a column about the declining population of Suriname many years ago. I would say over a ten-year period, Wakenaam alone in Region Three has lost two thousand persons.
What must be shocking for all PPP supporters is that despite humongous claims by the PPP leadership of Guyana being one of the countries that was not affected by the international recession of 2008 and how much growth Guyana has achieved in comparison with the rest of the worlds’ countries, our population is declining.
All over the world, the population of countries is growing.
The population decline comes at an interesting time when Prime Minister of St. Vincent, Ralph Gonsalves, published an analysis of some of the Caribbean countries and in reference to Guyana in comparison with other CARICOM nations, stated that Guyana is a “nation that possesses enormous potential.”
That perception of a CARICOM Prime Minister one month after Guyana celebrated forty-eight years of Independence tells the extraordinary tragedy of this land.
Literally forty years before Mr. Gonsalves made that observation most people who studied Guyana came to the same conclusion. Today people continue to say it. So when will this country ever realize its potential?
Surely, Ralph Gonsalves had to know that when he made that statement he made a huge Freudian dismissal of Guyana.
Gonsalves was a UWI lecturer in the seventies when Walter Rodney and Maurice Bishop and others were speaking about Guyana having the potential to be the centre of the Caribbean. Gonsalves knew both Walter and Maurice personally. Now long after his days of friendship with the radical intellectual Left of the Caribbean in the seventies, Gonsalves still sees Guyana as a country with gigantic potential.
Can some Caribbean journalist ask the St. Vincent Prime Minister when he thinks Guyana will realize that potential? Before we return to the census-taker, we should remind Mr. Gonsalves that in 1960, Guyana had a higher GDP and GNP than Malaysia. Any book on modern global economics will tell you that Malaysia is now listed as a developed state.
So this country with enormous potential is losing its population. And I repeat; I am not accepting those statistics. I believe our migration has been greater. The people of this rich land do not want to wait for the realization of the potentials. They are leaving. Of course, the entire contours of the census are still to be revealed.
The Government said that will be forthcoming in mid 2015. But since the Government is in possession of the compilation, then it knows all the dimensions of the census including ethnic composition.
For a party that has won elections from 1957 to 2011 on the basis on the ethnic vote, the census will be a nightmare for the PPP. And for this reason there will not be any snap elections. The census will reveal what even the average school boy knows – the Indian percentage of the population puts them below that of Africans and Coloureds combined.
Trust me! Uncle Donald or De Donald ain’t calling no snap poll.

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The census-taker, the dog and snap elections

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