‘Although it has bountiful resources, including gold and diamonds, Guyana is in the throes of one of the worst economic declines in the developing world. Its 750,000 people face chronic shortages of electricity, water, transportation, fuel and food. Jobs are scarce, and prices are soaring. … Its only thriving economic sector is the black market. … The World Bank estimates that Guyana has had the worst economic decline in the Third World over the last decade. … Hoyte imposed a three-year International Monetary Fund program that devalued Guyana’s currency by 70%, doubled interest rates to 35% and triggered 300% price hikes. …
About 20,000 workers from the state-owned sugar industry and all workers in the bauxite sector responded to the International Monetary Fund program by walking off their jobs. A sympathy teachers’ strike shut down the University of Guyana. … To soften the blow, the government gave state workers a 20% pay increase. But that was small change for salaries that dropped in value to $1 a day from $2.50 as a result of the devaluation. … Workers had to work two days to buy a pound of chicken or a pint of cooking oil. “A 20% increase is not enough. We need 1,000%,” said Lincoln Lewis, president of the Guyana Mine Workers Union.’ (‘Guyana Has Gold, Diamonds and Poverty : Despite Rich Natural Resources, Country’s Economy Is in Shambles’ Los Angeles Times, 28/05/1989).
In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle claimed that politics is the master science ‘for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a polis, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them (and)… legislates what it is necessary to do and to abstain from.’ Perchance you disagree with Aristotle, consider what is now taking place in Venezuela, which has multiple times the oil Guyana has, the quotes above, the record of the PPP/C over its 23 years in office and what is taking place now and you will at the very least pause.
