Looking ahead

“The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.“ (Elizabeth Bennett, Jane Austen’s heroine in Pride and Prejudice.)

The end of the year is when we tend to do our personal introspection and to resolve to change some of what we feel might be bad habits.

2008 has been a very challenging year, not only for Guyana, but around the world as well. The issues that have had the greatest impact on the lives of all Guyanese include crime, particularly violent crime; the illegal trade in drugs and arms; sexual violence; fatal road accidents, owing mainly to speeding and drunk driving; armed robberies and murders; the increase in food prices and latterly, the global economic crisis, which is bound to drive up poverty. However, over the past two weeks, these would all have been overtaken by a more immediate concern – flooding.

With only four days left in this year, many of us would have begun to anticipate or rather dread what 2009 will offer. Ordinarily, one would have to be a misanthrope on the level of Ebenezer Scrooge or the Grinch to not look ahead to the New Year with some sense of hope. The warmth of the season of goodwill usually helps harbour the assumption that the New Year will bring with it new hope, positive change and improvements on all fronts.
This time around, however, even the most ardent optimist would find it difficult to dredge up much enthusiasm. The woes in 2008 which will continue into 2009 are much too obvious; things will get worse before they get better and one should not expect the latter to happen anytime soon.

What we know for sure will happen in 2009, is that globally, companies will continue to falter and downsize; some will close and more people will lose jobs. Regardless of what UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other philanthropists say, economic recovery programmes in the so-called donor countries will have an impact on global aid. There will be less money available for poverty alleviation and for international responses to natural disasters.

Despite the drop in the price of oil, food prices will remain high because food is becoming scarcer; crops having suffered the impacts of extreme weather around the world owing to climate change and poor mitigation planning and execution. Wars around the world will continue to demand more and more of the earth’s resources, particularly its human resources.

At home, gun and drug related crimes will persist as plans to end these continue to be stymied by our porous borders – the gun and drug runners’ heaven. We can hope that the authorities will somehow manage to get a grip on sexual violence, road accidents, armed robberies and murders. However, the same issues that prevented this in 2008 will be present in 2009.

Flooding, we have now come to learn, will apparently always be with us. Unless they can relocate, or are relocated, residents of the so-called basin communities on the East Coast Demerara and elsewhere have to come to terms with the fact that they will be marooned during the rainy season and to make annual preparations for this.

Those of us who live in the city, pay taxes and do not litter will have to keep turning the other cheek. Apart from an infusion of verve within City Hall, what Georgetown really needs is money. Unfortunately, it seems, there will never be enough. And in any case, just how does one spend down apathy?