Priceless

Whilst the world has been enthralled over the last few weeks as thirty-two countries battled for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, a much heated debate has been growing here in the letter columns of the local broadsheets.

The subject of this discourse is the Guyana Prize for Literature. The rumblings over the delay in the announcement of the 2017 prize winners have being simmering for a while, since the last deadline for submissions to the biennial competition was the 31st March, 2017, and the highly anticipated results were expected before the end of last year. To date not even a short list has been released and when the secretary of the Guyana Prize, Al Creighton was approached, it was revealed that there was a problem with the lack of funding.

Minister of Social Cohesion, Dr George Norton, whose responsibilities includes the Department of Culture, Youth and Sport, told this newspaper on the 4th of June that the Department of Culture has to determine whether the competition was feasible and worth the large investment.

“We would not go spending that kind of money if we are not certain that it is achieving what it set out to achieve in the first place and if it’s worth the amount of money—because it runs into millions of dollars that we can illafford at this time,” Minister Norton was quoted as saying at the time.

“…I would like to present to Cabinet my take on the present situation after I have gathered all the information that is available to me with regards to the aims and objectives of the whole reason for having this prize, it’s success or shortcomings over the years, the cost and particularly if we’re getting value for money with the whole exercise,” the minister further added, while noting that there is a need for such a review because those who held responsibility for the portfolio are either not providing all the information, or do not have access to all the relevant information.

The fire was lit and the public discourse has ensued. As is often the case with discussions of this nature all manner of opinions are delivered, some very original and worthy of further thought and application, some are just useless rhetoric, while some are from those with axes to grind and totally irrelevant.

This dialogue which some writer could perhaps use as the plot for an entry in the Drama section for the Guyana Prize, has received both local and overseas contributions, including past winners, aspiring writers, and observers of the whole process. One excellent suggestion was for the Government to assist local prize winners with the publication, marketing and distribution of their literary efforts. Other topics broached