Maduro has played his first card

Dear Editor,

Since the recent discovery of oil offshore Guyana, I have respectfully posited in my writings and discussions as well as in a letter to this newspaper that this nation carefully guard its spoils with the utmost of zeal. This is the closest we will get to Eldorado.

I convincingly failed geography at Queens at my O Level attempt. Still, I know that dense liquids and water gravitate to lower levels, especially when assisted by a continental shelf such as ours in the Atlantic. For all these years, even a dunce like me, would have argued that oil was in our destiny. But we are too underdeveloped a nation to override the calculations of geopolitics.

I do not underrate Mr Maduro as a strategist, and his best chance for redemption is now. To hold on to power he has to build a coalition of willing business and trading partners to climb out of the current stress his country is caught in. To excite his people he must mend fences with North America in particular, once you follow the oil politics.

Thus according to an article released by Fox News on Monday, March 13, 2017 and carried in Yahoo postings today, the 14th, Comrade Maduro told his people over the weekend to expect  “big surprises” soon. Then he went on to state that he picked up the phone and called “The Donald”, President of the USA. Now that simple act of picking up the phone could have so many implications for Guyana going forward. Remember that the sitting US president wrote The Art Of The Deal, and Comrade Maduro has played his first card.

Guyanese politicians as a whole have to shift their paradigm. Let me elucidate: My former boss used to tell me that you don’t go to the best universities to just graduate, but to meet the right people with whom you can bond long after you become a captain in business, like souls and kindred spirits. Secondly, maybe just a few corporate titans in this country have ever had the conviction and the authority to sign billion dollar cheques without trembling. Those qualities right there distinguish a general manager and or a civil/public servant from a president/CEO.

When I was active, if I had to call Mr Greenberg of AIG in Delaware USA I would not dare tell my boss that I skipped. He would then say why the hell did I name you president? Act like one.  That is confidence and true emancipation. I want nothing but peace and the good life. My late father rode a bicycle from Alberttown to Mocha every day in a suit to serve as headmaster of the Methodist School. This was his first opportunity to leave J E Burnham in Kitty, thence to Essequibo to traverse treacherous rivers for 14 years whilst attaining his BA degree externally from London by gas lamp in the 1930s. He was thus the first primary school teacher in British Guiana to achieve that honour.

Both of us are London graduates, we both have the Golden Arrow of Achievement, 25 years apart ‒1970 and 1995 ‒ but he was also an MBE (Member of the British Empire) and that separated us. We have humbly served in our capacities to enhance this nation, the colonial government and the twin island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Our blood and tears are here.

Give us Eldorado.

Please.

Yours faithfully,
Denis E Moore