World-class and back of class

Sep 01, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

(Kaieteur News) – The Aussies are now on the bandwagon. Guyana is a world class mining place. Before the Australians, Americans from Exxon were waxing brightly about Guyana’s world class oil reservoirs. And, before the Australians and Americans, there was the irrepressible Mohamed Irfaan Ali (Excellency Ali) who never saw anything that his PPP Gov’t did in Guyana that was less than world class. If I come across that word ‘world class’ one more time, throwing up would follow.

Consider something. With all of its world class gold and oil wealth, Pres. Ali still finds it necessary to lecture poor Guyanese about hanging their hats too high. Shopping in supermarkets, and eating in restaurants. In a land overflowing with wealth, and a small population, the national leader tells Guyanese to watch where they buy and take note of where they eat. Well-meaning advice, or a troubled leader? Dr. Ali is someone, who’s always talking big, swaggering, being his worst enemy. He criticised citizens for refusing to allow their impoverished condition to keep them down. But it is his PPP-inspired and PPP Gov’t policies that have far too many Guyanese chewing on their fingernails, agonising on a way out of their social, financial, and familial dilemmas. One is too little food. Another is a leader who talks too much and delivers too little. A hot-air balloon politician.

World-class mining areas and world-class oil wealth should have Guyanese buying and eating anywhere they wish (with discretion and healthy limitation). The world-class wealth doesn’t trickledown to them. It comes in torrents. If Guyana had a population of 10 or 15 million people, I could make allowances, take the president’s counsel differently. But with barely a million citizens, and even that shaky, not one Guyanese (or Cuban, Venezuelan, or whomever) should be hungry and penniless in this country. With all the money circulating, all the fine numbers bandied about, where is it going? Who are getting more than their share, making a killing repeatedly?

Being touted as world class in more than one area, and by different people, means this for me: not a single Guyanese should find himself or herself at the back of the class. The back of the class is usually reserved for dunces; those who have given up on their potential. One of the strangest, and still inexplicable, element in this world-class country is that its people rush for a U.S. visa, readily risk Donald Trump’s America. Here’s another world-class mystery: the majority of those bailing out from Guyana are PPP supporters. What does that say, other than Pres. Ali’s own support base has no faith in he or his government? People don’t run away from an environment that is healthy, that offers them economic viability, that urges the believe that their leaders are trustworthy. Men and women who keep their word. They distribute the fruits of Guyana’s world-class economy fairly, so that all benefit properly and justly. Because ordinary Guyanese haven’t experienced that from the PPP, they take their chances in Uncle Sam’s territory.

Here’s a different example, Pres. Ali is on record as hailing Guyana’s healthcare system as ‘world class’. Yet his own people at various heights in the PPP Gov’t travel overseas for medical treatment, or bringing a new life into the world. So, what is it? Guyana has a world class healthcare system, or that’s just talking for the sake of talking, with globs of froth embedded? The numbers alone attest to Guyana’s status as a world-class economy. The goldfields and oilfields are both world class. I endorse all three. Now someone explain to the nation, why it is that probably half of Guyanese lives a last-class existence. It means that the PPP one percenters prosper, the top third to two-fifths manage, while the bottom half of the population punish. They must leave asparagus alone. Eat grass.

(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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