No doubt with an eye on winning political support, during the 2005 flood, the PPP/C government deployed some of its political personnel to deliver food hampers etc., to affected people. If my memory is correct, in Dazzell Housing Scheme on the East Coast, using a boat to go from house to house, as I was approaching one residence, an African woman on the balcony shouted ‘It good for al you! It good fu the PPP’. Somewhat surprised, I asked‘ what is good for the PPP?’ ‘The flood, the flood!’ she exclaimed. As it turned, out she lived in the bottom flat that was flooded and was being accommodated in the upper flat by her neighbour. Yet notwithstanding her dire condition and that of thousands of others, she found some pleasure in the fact that the flood must have seriously discomfited the PPP government! Anyone who believes that in the presence of a competitive narrative being propagated by ethnic entrepreneurs they could teach the multitude of such people on both sides of the political divide to sensibly cooperate in making a nation of Guyana is delusional.
I remembered this because currently it is commonplace to hear ‘Guyana is blighted!’ Not only because of the quarrel over the elections or even the coronavirus: the former was somewhat predictable and the latter is akin to an act of god. But how can it possibly be that after decades of hoping and praying that Guyana is oil-rich, no sooner is the oil found and El Dorado appears in sight, events have conspired to bring a product that has sustained global development for over a century to its knees and crush the aspirations of a poor and struggling country? If you tend towards a belief in supernatural designs, there might be something here for you. For me, however, the current disillusionment would be significantly less if there was a united national management piloting us in these uncharted waters, and it is to this that I return.
