It really matters little how much we shout about our ‘oil economy,’ make pronouncements about envisaged transformations and ‘soak up’ the credentials bestowed upon us by the assorted experts about just where we rank in the pecking order of oil-producing countries.
As has been the case elsewhere, oil can just as easily deliver a poisoned chalice, as it can, some measure of development, for reasons, some of which are already painfully apparent in our altogether deformed socio-political condition.
This observation sets aside, for the time being at least, the prognosis that fossil fuels will deliver an environmental apocalypse anyway and that the portents are already manifesting themselves in what, these days, are sometimes the fearful demonstrations of climate change. These have now become matters of boisterous confrontations between the climate changers, on the one hand and those who see the immediate socio-economic transformations that keep underdevelopment at bay.
The problem with the perspective of the climate changers, of course, is that their apocalyptic predictions become diluted in poor countries, like Guyana, ‘just come’ to the fossil fuel industry whose protracted intimacy with poverty and underdevelopment cause them to see the climate changers as little more than an irritant.
The reality here is that in a world where hitherto underdeveloped countries are regarding oil finds as avenues out of protracted poverty, climate changers and their apocalyptic proclamations are not rated amongst the most welcome of messengers…not when the examples of the Middle East, parts of Africa and, much closer home, two of our three immediate neighbours, have already furnished us with pointed examples of what oil can do to transform societies.
The climate change contention, one feels, will only secure a higher level of traction in poor countries when it becomes much more painfully apparent than it is at this time, that fossil fuels are indeed the apocalypse it is made out to be.
We in Guyana face a somewhat different fossil fuel challenge. It is linked, at this juncture, much more to our politics than to our oil ‘wealth.’ Going along with the envisaged prospects for dramatic material transformation that repose in oil-driven development are other kinds of humps in the road that Guyana must be ever mindful of. The problem here in Guyana is that the prospects that derive from what have been our multiple oil finds have been ‘sold’ to us in an ‘un-distilled manner; so that it has been made to appear as though oil, in itself, provides an unencumbered pathway to a socio-economic transformation that could take us somewhere close to some kind of utopia. So that in the midst of our internationally eye-catching oil conferences, the overnight exalted international media attention which the country now enjoys we may well be overlooking the socio-political fault lines which, our petro-driven dreams notwithstanding, could, to a greater or lesser extent, undermine our ‘blind’ ambitions.
The historic toxicity of our political culture, however much we immerse ourselves in denial, is possibly by far the biggest threat to our petro-driven development aspirations. What access to our huge oil resources has done is to seemingly further concretize forms of political behaviour which, once they persist, are likely to take us down hitherto foreboding pathways.
Our oil finds and the global attention that these have attracted up to this time have allowed us, to do no more than parade our potential. Our politics, notably, what, sometimes, are its decidedly rancid dimensions, (not least what, at times, has been a clear inclination to demonstrate a lack of appetite for democratic behaviour), could well become the cause of our descent down a slippery slope.
There are times when the conclusions that are drawn from assessments that originate from beyond our shores assert that we are likely to find it difficult to discard our ‘Banana Republic’ tag and that that, in the final analysis, will lead inexorably to us becoming a kind of socio-political purgatory. If this is not to be an inevitability we need to provide evidence, quickly, that our political process is moving in the direction of relieving itself of its historic toxicity. Worryingly, there are no such signs up to this time. We are still perceived, amongst our own citizenry, right here in the Caribbean and in the international community as a country which, over the years, has demonstrated far less than a hearty appetite for the democratic process. We can remove those perceptions only if we are prepared to make the kinds of decisions and assume the kinds of behavioural postures to which, as a country, we are still to grow accustomed.
