Oil could be Guyana’s Emancipation

Jul 31, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – This country’s fabulous oil discoveries could be the long-awaited, much hoped-for source of Emancipation for Guyanese by freeing them from the bondage and drudgery of poverty. We thought that the serenity of Sunday, though one day prior to the official observation of Emancipation Day is the best day of the week, to present our simple, little messages on what was and is nothing but a glorious day in the history of man. Blessed Emancipation Day to all our Afro Guyanese brothers and sisters, the children of those once subject to an eternity of the batteries of slavery. With this oil now gushing from beneath our feet, the rich promise of Emancipation from historic poverty is right here and right now, and it is one that is the birthright of each and every citizen of this country, regardless of their colour, politics, religion, or station.

We can move out of countrywide, lifelong poverty, those endless generations of getting by on the paltry, towards what is nothing but our God-given right to prosperity. This is the right of every Guyanese. But the prosperity that has always eluded us, despite our stream of riches all over, will not come about because we wish for it, or think about it. The prosperity that represents our freedom from impoverishment will not occur if we continue to trust and depend on leaders who have lost any claim to trust, whose record for principled reliability leaves them in shreds, and citizens in despair. Our Emancipation is invitingly close, right outside our doorstep, and it is ours for the taking, except that it wouldn’t be easy.

Emancipation from the devastation of our hopes and dreams will only come if we summon the strength to fight for what is rightly due to us, as a nation, as a citizen. The oil companies will not give us a single penny because they like us or respect us. They don’t have either appreciation or regard for us, and it is time that we, the Guyanese people, get that into our heads. The history of foreign predators in sailboats, then ships, then planes in Africa and Asia and the Americas is there. The coloured people of the world have been robbed and raped and rendered into property and beasts of burden everywhere that men came with their gifts and goodwill. They also went to those poor, backward societies with their swords and cannons to take for themselves what belonged to those living there.

Guyana is the new Africa, Guyanese are the new Incas, and our leaders in the PPP/C Government and the APNU+AFC Opposition are those tribal chiefs, subcontinent Indian Chiefs, and Indigenous American Chiefs who sold their people down the drain for a smile, a pat on the back, and the joy of being in the company of their betters. It was ‘Good boy’ and ‘good job’.We can get the dreamed-of Emancipation promise held by this oil wealth from divine providence (or nature) but only if we find the courage and the conscience to climb out of our comfort zones and confront our leaders.

Only if we discard loyalty to cult leaders (who may be common thieves) and only if we force them to face up to their duty to get more from our rapacious exploiters for us, only then the freedom to soar to the peaks of prosperity will come to us. As Guyanese, we all need Emancipation, but we don’t have a William Wilberforce or Thomas Clarkson, like the British did. Nor do we have the likes of Americans Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. If only we have a Toussaint L’Ouverture, if only we had a Sojourner Truth among the women, except those we have had and still do are nothing but on the side of the oil enslavers. If only our political betrayers didn’t deny and delay the National Emancipation from poverty that the independence of oil makes possible, then we must confront them and cast them out.

And if the only opening left for struggling, hurting Guyanese is to use the resources of their voices and their feet, then so let it be. But this Emancipation from individual and societal poverty must come, change must come.