Listen to Glenn Lall!

Jan 22, 2021 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Glenn Lall, the publisher of this newspaper and proprietor of Kaieteur Radio, has been the most outstanding voice to have emerged in Guyana over the past 10 years. He now hosts his own discussion radio show, The Glenn Lall Show, and is instrumental in highlighting the inadequacies of our oil sector and its management by the government. The public should take serious note of what Lall has to say.
His intentions are selfless. If there is any man who can be held to his word, it is Glenn Lall. There is no mask involved. What you see, is what you get.
He cannot be accused of using his media to advance his personal ambitions. He has made it clear that he has no desire to hold public or political office. He is not running for anything; the only race he is in is the human race.
Lall is not after material gain. He has made his mark by creating and building a local media empire which involves owning the country’s leading newspaper. He has achieved this without political help, least of all from the government, which tried to suppress his newspaper by denying it of advertisements during the first 10 years of its existence.
What drives Lall is his conviction that we are all put in the world for a purpose. He believes that God has a purpose for him and that purpose is to bring about betterment for the country and its people.
Glenn Lall is outspoken and courageous. He talks what is on his mind and is not afraid or bothered if he offends anyone. He has faced all manner of persecutions and lawsuits but these have never deterred him from being true to what he believes.
What he is presently saying about our oil, bauxite, gold and timber cannot be contradicted. It is a fact that after more than 100 years of multinational corporations exploiting Guyana’s natural resources, the country has nothing to show in return.
Omai came here more than 40 years ago and said that it had discovered the famed El Dorado. Guyanese believed that everyone would soon have become millionaires. All the gold is gone and Guyanese are still awaiting the promised riches. Other large scale gold mining companies have set up shop but the country remains piss poor.
The discovery of oil presented the country with a chance to avoid the pitfalls of the past. But the country’s leaders have sold us short. Lall has been exposing some of the deals which have been made, and their lopsidedness. Two major oil blocks were handed out under less than transparent process. These arrangements, Lall argues has robbed present and future generations of the chance for a better life.
He wants all of this to change. And so he has been vociferous in condemning what has taken place. He has been advocating for a better deal. His newspaper is now dominated by information on the oil and gas sector.
His assessments and analyses are sound. Nothing Lall has said has been contradicted by anyone or any authority. His newspaper has been supporting its arguments with unassailable facts not only from Guyana but from around the world.
Glenn Lall is single-handedly carrying the fight for a better deal. There is no active civil society in Guyana. And so Lall has been ably filling that vacuum. He is assuming a non-partisan stance. He cannot be accused of siding with any political party. Both of the country’s main political parties have been criticized by him. But he is unapologetically on the side of the people and is pressing for them to enjoy their fair share of the country’s wealth.
Lall is also pointing to the need for a rethink in the way the country’s natural resources are managed. He makes a simple proposition: when these resources are non-renewable; when they are exhausted, they are lost forever. It is better, he says, to leave them in the ground, than to sell them short. His message is not only in relation to oil but for all the country’s natural resources. He argues that foreign companies are hogging this wealth and the people have not benefitted from it.
Guyanese should listen closely to Glenn Lall. He may well turn out to be the person who is able to influence the change for which the people of Guyana have been clamouring for more than 100 years.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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