Our Wealth, Our Country

Mar 28, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The messages regarding Guyana’s oil wealth are registering and sinking in with more strength in Guyanese hearts. The concerns over weak leadership and management and many fears of how this oil benefits all Guyanese are deepening and spreading.
The latest evidence is in the public arrival of a group calling itself ‘Our Wealth, Our Country’ (OWOC). In the presence of this newest local voice, the cries of Guyanese are sounded, and they are being heard. The people behind the formation of OWOC see themselves as worried Guyanese patriots. They don’t like where we are with our massive oil wealth. How it has been handled from the inception, how leaders have not learned anything, how leaders refuse to make the necessary moves to get more out of it for all citizens of this country, and share it across the board. So, these concerned Guyanese put their heads together, and joined hands in a show of disagreement and objection to where matters currently are with this patrimony of ours.
They are fellow citizens with working class heritage for the most part. Loyal people who know what is required to toil tirelessly and honestly to climb the ladder of success. At this time, they are few in numbers, but as we all know, out of such beginnings great things can grow. Already, since their launch, several hundred Guyanese have stepped forward in solidarity with the visions of OWOC. They are for a better life for our poor who grapple to make ends meet in life’s daily struggles. These also extend to Guyana’s middle class, which finds itself more squeezed, and in the uncomfortable position of fearing its members could be condemned to the fate of citizens struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder.
What OWOC looks for is a better deal from this enormous oil wealth. It plans to challenge and confront national leaders, who promised much during the 2020 elections, but it is those same leaders now standing up in fierce resistance against any Guyanese who call upon them to learn from the huge mistakes of the past, and make amends. That is, move with vigor and determination to get to the table of renegotiation with Exxon, and go through the issues that are of utmost importance to each and every Guyanese.
Each and every Guyanese is not limited to the few hundred favoured ones inside government and around its leaders, who reap and runaway with the major benefits flowing from the nation’s wealth. Each and every Guyanese means just that. Tt’s where all citizens, regardless of who they voted for, now raise their voices and rise in protest against the most, horrendous oil deal ever. Guyanese are weary and wrathful of being taken advantage of by political leaders who mislead them where the bigger things are concerned and misrepresent them before foreigners, when our many natural resources wealth blessings have been involved.
As OWOC pointed out, it has been the same anemic and tragic story with just about all aspects of our rich resources.
Guyana, as a country, has lived through one terrible deal after another with its gold, its bauxite, and its timber, among other areas of national wealth. We, as a people and society have largely known only poverty and struggle, despite having all these riches in abundance. Now that the oil is here, and is in proven billions of barrels, this cannot continue. This has to stop right now.
Government leaders and Opposition leaders are given the kind of notice that they are sure to find troubling. The people who voted for them want to see a difference, experience improvement, actually taste the fruits of our land. All leaders are given warning; pay attention, take heed, act and act now. Do something that is significant with this oil. It begins with renegotiation, and if that message has to be blare across the length and breadth of this gifted land, then it shall be.
This is what will be, for Guyanese are faced with a choice. Stand up for what is theirs and get what is due or, live like dogs fighting for scraps. OWOC mean that more are hearing and readying themselves to right national wrongs. Renegotiate for a better deal.

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Our Wealth, Our Country

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