Introduction
This week’s column treats with what still passes today as Guyana’s “national debate on its projected Government Take” or revenue share obtained from the export of barrels of crude oil equivalent (boe) based on its petroleum discoveries as detailed in last Sunday’s column. To recall, that column had considered the national debate as it pertained to the local reporting on the size, speed and the “success rate or creaming curve” revealed in those discoveries. By and large, I had concluded that a political bubble aimed at first denying the finds as fake news/propaganda and later morphing into a national debate directed at separating successful petroleum finds from government success.
I, therefore, posited that the quick flourishing locally of echo chambers, media hucksters and hustlers, self-styled experts and analysts had generated a national debate, which was confined to distinct loops and circuits of opinion that were effectively closed to “outsiders”.
