“Same ole’ same ole’…are we going to vote race again and trust the same people?

Jan 21, 2019 Features / Columnists, Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
All my life I’ve always thought my country was a blessed place. We have gold, diamond, bauxite, all the natural resources one can imagine. Since we are so blessed with raw materials, it was only fair that we did not have oil. Or so I thought.
When they were drilling exploratory wells all over Berbice I kept wondering why they weren’t drilling in Essequibo. Commonsense dictated if we had even a kerosene oil can of oil, it would be in Essequibo. Where is Venezuela’s oil…? To their east near our border. Where is Trinidad’s oil…? To the southeast, nearest to us. Now that they’ve drilled the closest to the Essequibo area, no surprise, they are finding gobs of the black stuff.
With that being said, Guyana now has the opportunity to have the wealthiest population, even more so than Saudi Arabia with its 33 million citizens. Even if all the Guyanese scattered abroad came home we still have a small population of just over a million people. Sadly, that is less likely to occur because of an old curse of our country; politicians.
With all our blessed resources we’ve been cursed with politicians who do not have the country at heart. As a people who I think are the smartest and most innovative on this planet, we’re amongst the daftest when it comes to politics. Politicians have always used race to divide and conquer Guyanese, and to this day we the people have allowed them to continue dividing and exploiting us, despite having the world of information at our fingertips and should be wiser.
Now that so much oil is discovered and Guyanese are finally in a position to pull themselves out of the poverty and misery in which we have lived for so many decades, we are about to throw it all away by letting politicians con us with the same old race-baiting. They will convince us to vote race again, get in there and enrich themselves, while throwing a few morsels at us to say they’ve done something for the country. Whenever this next election is, Guyanese have a unique chance to break this cycle of political exploitation. Neither the PPP nor the PNC have had the country at heart. All Guyanese should “blank” or boycott both parties and break from the race politics of the past.
With this coming oil wealth, we should be able to fund an all-weather highway to Lethem which will open up more settlements in the interior, or even a railway to Lethem. We should be able to fund a hydro project and wind farms to adequately supply the electricity needs of the country and lower electricity rates.
We should be able to build permanent bridges across the three rivers, especially the Berbice River. We should be able to raise the salaries of teachers and nurses to halt the continuous exodus of such professionals. We should be able to raise the salaries of the police force to attract more moral recruits than we currently are. We should have a more modern hospital and with attractive salaries, adequate staffing. We should be able to expand our agriculture sector to produce more food and avoid being just an oil-based economy. We should be able to make loans available to the common citizen to build proper homes and encourage small businesses.
But alas, I’m just a dreamer and none of this is likely to happen. Politicians will come around once again, touting race. And like the idiots who followed the pied piper to their doom, we will once again vote race and put the greedy ones in power.
The oil wealth will pour into their personal accounts while they build a road or two here and there, enrich their friends and build mansions for themselves.
As long as Guyanese are stupid enough to continue voting race and fall for false promises, we will remain poor citizens with ultra-rich leaders like the African oil countries that Kaieteur News has been highlighting so often.
Only a mad man would do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome. Are we going to vote race again? Are we going to trust the same people who were grabbing for themselves to do the right thing this time around?
M. Alves

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