A unifying force

Sep 30, 2015 Editorial

There is nothing more unifying than adversity. In times of adversity families come together to form an unbreakable bond. It is the same with territorial issues. In times of crisis the people of a country form a solid link against the external force that threatens their very existence.
Guyana has never been a rich country. It sat and watched others that were once in the same state move ahead to the point where those countries have now become part of the developed world while Guyana continues to languish at the bottom of the global pile. Indeed, conditions favoured those countries.
For one, they had a sizeable population; they retained their skilled people and culturally they were people who were not lured by the glitter of other countries. Even the people in our corner of the world were not lured to the other countries as we have been.  This must have been because of our politics and the resort to our ethnic differences.
Fortune smiled on Guyana quite recently, not that fortune has not been favouring this country that does not enjoy the luxuries of white sandy beaches and blue water. Its location at the mouth of the Orinoco which dumps tons of silt along Guyana’s coast has put paid to that. But the Orinoco apart, there is its location away from the earthquake and hurricane belts.
More recently, after years of searching and false alarms, an oil rig ascertained that Guyana had a large oil reserve. With that discovery came the problem that has sought to unite the people of this country. Neighbouring Venezuela which has been laying claim to a sizeable portion of this country suddenly ramped up the odds. It threatened invasion although its national leader kept insisting that an armed invasion was far from reality.
This is not the first time that Guyana has had cause to feel threatened. Soon after it became an independent nation, it became aware that its neighbor to the west was laying claim to the mineral rich Essequibo. Again in 1982 when the condition established by the United Nations came to an end, there was this problem again.
The only time Guyana was able to breathe freely was when the late Hugo Chavez said that this country had nothing to fear from Venezuela. It never did during his lifetime but with his successor it is a different story.  There has even been a military buildup on our borders. It is this military buildup that brought about the unified Guyana that the new government has been seeking ever since it came into office.
Not a single Guyanese could contemplate a Guyana without Essequibo. In the same way, no Guyanese would want to be denied its newfound oil wealth. This oil find promises to be this country’s ticket to prosperity.
At one time rice and sugar combined to lift Guyana out of its economic morass but Venezuela stepped in and conspired to leave Guyana wallowing in its poverty. It thwarted this country’s pursuit of hydro development that would today have saved up so much and would have placed us far up the economic ladder. But for Venezuela Guyana would have had cheap power today and a host of industries. There would have even been a bauxite smelter.
There was rice which now seems to be losing its lustre because of the collapse of the Venezuelan market. Rice fetched a hefty price on the world market.  At one time it was a gem but we failed to take it further than a primary crop.  Without cheap power, increasingly, money from rice went to buy expensive fuel.
Sugar, once called King Sugar was another crop that kept Guyana in the development loop. But nothing remains the same; sugar too has lost its power. It also took money from sugar to buy fuel. Venezuela caused that when it torpedoed the Kumerau hydroelectric project.
There is no Guyanese who are not saying no to Venezuela. Even those who dusted the soil of this country from their feet are making their voices heard. Wish that this unity would last.