Policymaking – lifting the bar 

May 16, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Policymaking is the decision finalized on what will be done.  What is envisioned, what is intended, what must be made to happen.  The rest-procedures and rules and guidelines-is the storehouse of principles used by the bureaucrats on how to get the policies to spring to life.

Policymaking is about leadership.  The do-or-die: this is it, what is going to be.  The compendium of policies can be a document, a statement, that sparkles with thinking of a profound nature.  What is profound and prospering for Guyanese with their patrimony is the pinnacle of the any policymaking recital.  The chief policymaker revels in being king of the circus, a master of the ruckus.  What does this policy signify for each citizen?  How does it balance the power of the people with the profits dreamed of by the people at Exxon?  In an age of great expectations among Guyanese, what policies must drive the Environmental Protection Agency? The laws of Guyana, or the self-serving calculations of ambitious politicians?  What milks Guyana’s sacred cow by outsiders for outsiders versus what extracts the best for Guyanese from it?  It has been a cow of many moos but one that delivers so little locally, other than the swish of its tail (policymaking) that lashes Guyanese away from the milk.  The rich milk that flows so abundantly from deep below the seas, but which is forbidden for locals to drink in large, sweet draughts.  The sacred cow of Guyana is the Exxon contract: an untouchable I have heard, a beast that demands human sacrifices (today’s wretchedly disappointed), child sacrifices (generations still to come), national sacrifices (Guyana’s pride and dignity savaged).  More unchecked production.  A more lenient EPA.  More leadership easing and collaborating with oil operators.  To be blunt, I believe and assert that what is happening behind the scenes are more local leadership-foreign oil company partnerships, even outright conspiracies that devastate Guyanese prospects.

What kind of policymaking can it ever be when attacks are directed at the people whose oil legacy this is?  What policy when free rein is given to the people whose priorities are to gouge and gorge of their fill in Guyana’s paradise?  One where predatory freedom reigns, where secrets deepen.  That may be settled policy, but I believe that it reflects leadership timidness and leadership impotency.

Policymaking can never be visited by what is profane and pungent.  Let there be some listening by those making a big production about policymaking.  Trust me, learning will come, no matter how resisted, how tortured, how the clock is delayed.  Exposing will come in due time.  Give Guyanese one policy, one only, one where all citizens rejoice.  Their prospects.  Their being pushed towards the top of the economic ladder, then above it.  Not the reverse: policies that pauperize, frag down.  Theatrics is not policy, nor playing the lunatic.  The cursing and ranting must cease, no more dutty spectacles.  How about that for policies?  Better for there to be sincere, straight leadership.  What vaults over every hurdle, conquers every challenge.  Not these tactics that reek of the baffling, of what accrues to Exxon’s delights.  Guyana has all that it needs to be nirvana.  Exxon can go along for the ride or take its place in the second chair.  The first policy is that there is only one policy, and it is honesty.  Leaders say that and live that, and no more is left to be said.

I have seen so many holes in the policies of those pretending at oil policymaking; flaring, EPA, audits are the equivalent of having Swiss cheese from breakfast to supper – policymaking with holes.  I fully understand that all of this is wasted on probably compromised leaders.  Those who have no stomach for the oil wars that must be fought. Those who suffer from an inferiority complex, the kind of background, makeup, that guides them to hide behind the strengths of others.  They have countless resources.  I have my policy, which is to stick to the hand that life has dealt me.  Public tantrums should never be part of the treasured portfolio of national leaders.  Grown men must conduct themselves in a grownup manner, reflecting whatever training they had.  The brattish, out of control schoolboy must be banished forever, no matter how that juvenile character may be loved, still embraced, love to be let loose.  The white man already has Guyana’s leaders eating his leftovers; why allow him to wrinkle his nose in utter distaste?

Old policies found unworkable should be shelved, and new ones made, implemented.  I have this duty that is inscribed in blood.  And that can be drawn too.  What is there to fear about Exxon reduction in profits?  Why is that a life-and-death consideration?  Teachers are striking, what about them?  How come no money?  Are the messages being absorbed?  Understand fellow Guyanese what we have, how much is wrong, who is responsible. This oil wealth must move from miracle to material in the grasp, what changes the life of Guyanese for the better.  Try that for some real policymaking.

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• bureaucrats, decision, GHK Lall, policymaking, procedures

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