In another decade or so Guyana is likely to be different, something to ponder is how much so. Will things look the same, be the same or will they change a great deal in the year 2020?
Predictions, generally, are tough to make, particularly about the future but after posing the question to a few willing individuals in the society we managed to build a collection of interesting forecasts.
Apart from those, most persons polled at random seemed convinced that Brazilians will rapidly integrate into the society and the ethnic composition of the country will drastically change. Consequently, the voting populace will no longer be a major division of Afro and Indo Guyanese.
If oil is found in the Corentyne Guyana should do well, many predicted but ‘if’ is the deciding factor. There was a general consensus on taxes being high or higher, the health sector still being challenged with the AIDS pandemic and CN Sharma still being the most popular television personality.
As for the selected predictions, here goes:
Elfrieda Bissember – Curator, National Art Gallery
I hope that by this time the much anticipated oil reserves will be well into the process of extraction and marketing in a global marketplace that brings abundant revenues for the Guyana government. All of this should take place without the degradation of the environment or the natural or built landscape of eastern Guyana and without, one hopes, the use of our petroleum products contributing to the furthering of global warming! (A tall order perhaps!)
By 2020 these revenues should be able to provide electricity on all roads in Georgetown and along our coasts, and in every village, so that citizens can live in peace and security. The maintenance of current road systems and the building of new ones into the interior of Guyana should be underway; similarly I hope that a national road and river transportation service will be in place so that all Guyanese, whatever their means, can travel safely and comfortably to all parts of our large country, which is still to be discovered and occupied by so many of us.
The building of roads inland should also be the start or accompaniment of investment in our indigenous industries and technologies, particularly those based on the wealth of our agricultural and forest products. By then the harnessing of some of our great waterways can produce cheap electricity to power all those street lights and new industries. Perhaps by then too, the appearance or real presence of wealth will persuade Guyanese and foreigners to migrate, remigrate and invest here. Finally perhaps by 2020 the opening up of the interior will have started the process of shifting a new, or second, capital city inland, not only, as Prof. Westmaas has said, to avoid the dangers of rising sea levels and other environmental catastrophes, but because it is ridiculous for us all to remain crowded and encroaching on each other’s limited spaces as we now do, on this concentrated strip of coastland. To found such a new city will also be a great challenge for our urban planners, architects, and designers, and can symbolise an era of new growth and creativity for Guyana still in the early years of a new millennium.
Ajay Baksh – Communications Manager, Conservation Inter-national (Guyana)
Guyana should be better off than it is now, hopefully and Guyanese would have matured as a people and nation. Consequently, people will better understand the issues, which is so important. A quick look around today suggests that many of us do not.
Certainly we will still have VAT or worse, a new tax! But on a more serious note, Stabroek News would be receiving government ads so you guys can cheer up for the fight will be over in 2020.
Twelve years from now I will still be here and maybe a few other persons but for sure, countless Brazilians.
The Brazilians are taking over; they already have Robb Street in their grip. Robb Street should in fact be renamed to something Brazilian. The bridge between Guyana and Brazil will certainly be completed by then so they will come in the numbers.
Without a doubt CN Sharma will still be the most popular man on television in Guyana in 2020, I just do not see that changing. Hopefully we would have found the proverbial oil by then.
As far as politics go, we will still have only two major political parties for a decade or so is not going to change that and the society will still be polarized.
Seriously I think we will look back and say that these days were better. We better cherish them because what lies ahead may not be what we are expecting.
Carlotta Williams – Executive Director, Lifeline Counselling Services
In keeping with my line of work, I see a Guyana where the heartbreaking conditions that now exist would have ended.
I see the children who are living with HIV today and the ones who are orphaned and vulnerable receiving a tertiary education, or, having already graduated from academic or other institutions, working to contribute meaningfully to this country. Hopefully, some of them would also be happily married and raising children in an environment quite unlike what they have had to endure.
This would be so because I envision a more caring society, which so embraces children who are orphaned that their vulnerability ceases to exist; a society where child abuse and domestic violence are no longer tolerated.
Maybe by 2020, there would a cure for HIV, or a vaccine that prevents people from becoming infected. If not, I would hope that improved medication is developed so that HIV is no longer a terminal illness. By then, the stigma and discrimination that surrounds HIV would be no more and persons living with the disease would be treated no differently than anyone else.
Petamber Persaud – Editor, Guyana Annual
By 2020 there will be a massive reversal of resources into Guyana including human resources. What I see or rather hope for is that Guyanese in the diaspora will return and bring with them years of expertise and much needed capital so the brain drain will become a brain gain.
What I also see is an explosion of writing. Yes, writing. People will find the time to write each other and debate issues using the language which many seem to have forgotten. The dream of a day of Guyanese literature would have also been realized by then. Long before 2020, there will be a battle of the issues, denouncing the Guyanese ‘cold war’, replacing suspicion with respect. A.R.F. Webber declared, “Wouldst thou be Great? /Then grapple to thy soul these primal truths. /Greatness is neither born of intolerance nor schism/But ’tis a sturdy growth of open minds”.
The struggles we face now as a nation augur well for the future. I believe that by then people will deal with issues. Everyday people are waking up, even the layman is in tune with what is happening. By the year 2020 the roadside parliament where the masses meet will play a greater role in what happens in this country. They are the persons that are not being tapped into right now and the day will come when this oversight will be corrected.
Martin Carter wrote in the 1960s, “The middle where we meet is not the place to stop”. The dialogue, the debate, the conversation must continue apace or we would never claim tomorrow as a people. Martin was and is speaking to us from various platforms including three political camps, the university (of hunger), and the rumshop — the street corner parliament. Martin is still asking where all the intellectual flowers have gone.
Al Creighton – Columnist
The Guyana of 2020 is an expanded and bustling economy with industry somewhat more diversified more exports, a significant growth in secondary industries like manufacturing, and a higher GDP than in 2007. However, it is relatively shallow and dominated by commerce and trade, with a large import bill.
By the year 2020, based on the attention now being paid to its foreign policy and activities, Guyana will have imp
roved its international stature, with increasing respect coming from the international community. The country’s image will have improved.
The capture of a few more top drug lords will have helped to clean up Guyana’s record and earned more North American trust in the fight against narco traffic and money laundering. The fight will not have been won, but Guyana will have struck deals with USA and Canada, will receive aid and boosted its capacity to fight this war.
In 2020 legal/legitimate trade with Brazil will be a flourishing, everyday activity. Guyana’s relations with Amazonia will be strong, its profile higher and commerce on the rise, though the other Amazon neighbours will be getting more out of it than Guyana. With the new bridge and faster, easier roadway, Lethem will be a busier urban centre and there will be a number of annoying and dangerous problems in some of the communities along the way.
It is the year 2020 and Guyana is the only Caricom country to have implemented all the regional agreements reached in the CSME; free movement of professionals without work permits, hassle-free travel and a “single domestic space” policy
The PPP/C will still be in power. Although there will be more non-PPP ministers in the Cabinet, successive attempts at shared governance and constitutional changes in the system will have failed. No third party will have been able to sustain electoral success, break into and upset the entrenched dominance of the PPP and PNC. The AFC will not have done it. The number of Blacks in the PPP and Black support for that party will have increased since 2007, but the PNC will not have courted any corresponding increase in its Indian members or support. The PNC has not won the trust and confidence of businessmen.
This is 2020, and there has been very little significant change in the general population figures. Migration patterns have continued unchanged but the size of Guyanese communities in the diaspora has grown rapidly. The communities in England and the Bahamas have become more organized and the Black Guyanese population in the USA has become united with an organized community in New York to match that of the Indians in Richmond Hill. The proportions between the two major ethnic groups within Guyana have stabilised, but there is an increase in the Amerindian population, which has become more prominent and active in public and professional life. That group known in Guyana as the Portuguese, however, has dwindled drastically to only a few of the more affluent and successful families in business. They have been largely replaced by a new and growing community of ‘Portuguese’ from Brazil.
Negla Brandis – Beauty Consultant
I would like to think that by then there is overall improvement in the country but given my current interests I would imagine that the lives of senior citizens are improved in 2020. Many persons in their late 50s and 60s would be in that bracket by then and I really hope things improve for them.
Seniors are neglected in Guyana the focus is always on youths which I do not have a problem with but this is an area that is crying out for attention. I see a Guyana 12 years from now that has recognized the importance of treating seniors well; one in which the pension paid to seniors is worth mentioning — a pension that is six times what it currently is or more.
Healthcare for seniors would be better and the attitude of the staff at the Accident and Emergency Unit at the public hospital would have changed towards seniors for the better. Social services in general would have been upgraded for seniors and some amount of recreational activities would be on stream for them. Additionally, I hope pre-retirement counselling is introduced in the country and persons can access it a year prior to retiring. Lastly, I trust public transportation for seniors would be available so they can get around the country without hassle.
Denis Chabrol – President, Guyana Press Association
Here’s what I predict: Guyana will be an economically prosperous but socially challenging country. The country will become Caricom’s newest bedrock of oil and other precious resources. However, accompanying these will be corruption and other associated problems. The country will also become more of an appendage of a foreign power, in a bid to grapple with challenges to its poorly patrolled borders.
Drug barons and continental terrorist groups will run amock in our hinterland, forcing us to engage more with major foreign powers. The global environmental thrust towards green partnerships will afford us an entree in forging multi-purposed relationships.
On the positive side, Guyana will become a major source of value-added and organic products, rivalling Trinidad and Tobago and Brazil as source of processed agri products. Also one of the vertebrae of the country’s economic back-bone will be the source and conduit of Information Technology for commerce and the delivery of health care and other natural science-based services.
With development comes challenges and that’s the battle of the future- getting development and prosperity with a truly human face.
