Conversation Tree

GUYANA GRASPS AT THE PROSPECT FOR PROGRESS IN THE NEW YEAR

Predictions of significant economic growth in Guyana due to the developing petroleum industry are being realized. Guyana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2021 was US$8.04 B., representing a 20 percent growth rate. GDP reached the US$4 B mark in 2012 and increased to US$5 B in 2019. From US$8.04B in 2021 the GDP is projected to grow in 2022 by 56 percent which will take its projected GDP to US$12+ B. Its per capita income grew from US$9,000+ to US$10,000+.

IT’S CHRISTMAS!

Guyanese would probably think of better things to do than read the newspapers today. For those who choose to read this article, please accept my best wishes for a Happy Christmas. For other readers of Stabroek News, and all Guyanese, I wish you also Happy Christmas. Stabroek News has generously published the articles that I began to write for my blog, Conversation Tree (conversationtree.gy), and still do. I had begun writing for the Mirror several years before, taking over Mrs. Janet Jagan’s page 3 after she passed. But I was later relegated to the second to last page, amidst the sports news, after Mr. Donald Ramotar, campaigning for the PPP’s nomination, like me, took over page 3. Of course, I was not notified and thought that the Mirror had stopped publishing me. It was only upon inquiry I was notified of my ‘demotion.’ Unusually, Stabroek News occasionally ran a news story on my Mirror articles. After the PPP and I fell out in 2012, I began the blog and SN began to publish the articles I wrote for the blog. At this time of giving thanks, which marks approximately ten years of publication, which I thankfully acknowledge and wish its Editor in Chief, its editors, its staff in general and its Sunday Editor and staff in particular a Happy Christmas.

THE MUSLIM STATE OF ‘ALI IRFAAN.’

Former Prime Minister and Mayor Hamilton Green, writing in one national newspaper on December 15, suggested that Guyanese should not be surprised if Guyana is renamed the ‘State of Ali Irfaan.’ Unlike current Mayor of Georgetown, Pandit Ubraj Narine, who sees the emergence of a Muslim State in conflict with Hindus, the now self-styled ‘Elder,’ sees the new State as embracing Hindus. His prediction is that the Georgetown will be renamed ‘Bharrat City.’ This convergence of a Muslim State with a Hindu Capital should give some solace to the Mayor, who feared personalized conflict. At least the Mayor, a Hindu Priest, would be presiding over a capital city that bears a Hindu name, ‘Bharat,’ an ancient name for India.

FR. MALCOLM RODRIGUES S.J.

The life and work of Fr. Malcolm Rodrigues represent and symbolize much more than his individual efforts, courageous though they were. The violent rigging of the 1973 elections facilitated by the seizure of the ballot boxes by the Guyana Defence Force and their sequestration at Camp Ayangana, enabled the PNC to declare a two-third majority victory. This frightening event gave an impetus to political activities. Opposition to the PNC had been led mainly by the PPP through parliamentary debates, political meetings, industrial action by GAWU and modest civil society activity for civil liberties orchestrated mainly by the PPP. The traumatic rigging of the elections, in which two PPP activists, Bholanauth Permanand and Jagan Ramessar, were shot at No. 63 Village, Cornetyne, arrested, and bled to death over hours at the back of a police land rover, shocked the nation. It brought additional forces in the campaign for free and fair elections, civil liberties and human rights. The launching of the WPA in 1975 introduced new and dynamic voices, mobilised additional support and created optimism. Fr. Malcolm Rodrigues was one of these voices.

WOULDN’T IT BE A GREAT DAY FOR GUYANA IF….?

On September 27, 1965, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) delivered a 1965-page report into Racial Problems in the Public Service of British Guiana. By letter dated April 6, 1965, Prime Minister Burnham, in his invitation, said to the ICJ that his Government had been “deeply concerned with the need to remove from our society sources of racial disharmony and to promote the right of each individual, whatever his ethnic origin, to have an equal opportunity to play a meaningful part in the community.” He said that his Government’s concern had been to “determine whether such [racial] imbalance as may exist in any particular field can be corrected and, if so, what is the shortest practicable period for such correction.” Burnham may well have been pressured by the UK to invite the ICJ having regard to searing ethnic strife of the early 1960s and the perceived undermining of Indian political representation by the imposition of proportional representation to defeat the PPP.