My life expectancy: Pity I’ll never…

Concerning Sugar, Oil and Gas Please save our, Brigadier’s Park! and these Gorillas!

Hello friends - both “regulars” and newcomers to this man-in-the–street column - come share, with me, my brief lamentations, concerns and a few expectations as 2021 gains its two-week momentum.

Now it’s not the dreaded Coronavirus which made me refer to life expectancy in my lead caption. Life expectancy - the culmination of the period of life after birth - varies in the world societies. People live longer where the climate is consistently friendly and wholesome; where governments and local communities are able and willing to provide appropriate health care, education and employment; where the quality of life dictates healthy, long-living lifestyles.

And it is not merely rich development that fosters longer life-expectancies. I understand that in such places as the mountains of Russia and Mongolia and China old dudes can all “expect” to live to their mid-nineties!

Barring daily murders and traffic fatalities here, what is Guyana’s current life-expectancy rate? Sixty plus? Seventy plus? I really don’t know. Please assist.

I’m wrong to don’t expect?

All the foregoing is to situate two main personal realities: In a few short days I hope to complete another year in this Guyana land on this planet. (It’s referred to as “a birthday”.)

Secondly, even though I’ll truly welcome being wrong, I don’t expect to enjoy experiencing a few basic things other societies take for granted. (After voting from the sixties and the country being managed by thirteen (13) Governments in my time here.)

Here we go: I don’t expect ever to witness cordial government–opposition relations. Talk about “unity/ working together” will remain hot air as the Brigadier’s opposition fumes at its current status and fears being in same for years to come. After decades I won’t expect normal civilized electricity supply. (Will oil revenues change that?)

Our Capital City remains my enduring distress as my end-of-life beckons. Politics will dictate no orderliness, no cleanliness, and no citizen responsibility as the Georgetown Garbage City will remain the nastiest in the Caribbean. City Hall will never regain its architectural/aesthetic glory- like St George’s has - before I die. The Le Repentir Cemetery will remain a national disgrace! South Georgetown roads will never be repaired. But the PPP might oversee the new Ogle-to-East Bank throughway.

Utilisation of oil revenues will never be pleasing to the opposition. I’ll experience divisive drama always. And magistrates will never sentence uniformly.

I shall experience no new big dance bands or orchestras or choirs in this land and Guyanese songs and music will never be heard in the Caribbean as how Jamaican music dominates here. Be sorry for me fellow countrymen. Or prove me wrong before I depart.

On Sugar, Oil, Gas

The Saturday January 09, 2021 edition of this newspaper ran a comprehensive piece on the “Major rehab for Uitvlugt sugar factory.”

I’m not sure what made me read the whole story but by the end I felt very knowledgeable about sugar factory issues.

Look working-class countrymen: we know of the historic nature of that industry and its influence both on our eventual demographics and politics and national economy. Now we read numerous analyses regarding this PPP government’s determination to ‘bring back sugar’. Letters, articles, features abound. I read them all. But my mind and perspective remain basic and simple. (Not simplistic).

Like oil, sugar will recede as an economic entity in a decade or three. The PPP must not allow its “sugarworker-supporter” politics to dictate that oil revenues fund sugar’s comeback.

I’ll support the resuscitation but Public Private Partnership (PPP) is the way to go. Try investors from India and Brazil.

And oh! Consider the warnings of the IEEFA’s Tom Sanzillo about the premature thinking on bringing the gas to shore!

The Brigadier’s Park, Peaceful Gorillas.

Seriously folks, I’d like the Ministries of Works and

Culture (?) to pay attention to D’Urban Park in the Capital City.

I don’t favour the wooden stands and I’m aware that the Auditor-General never found out the real accurate final cost of building the park from the jungle it was. Seemingly, naughty goings-on happened.

But it remains a useful Poor People’s Public (PPP) facility. The entire project was never completed. The two ministries must take charge.

The BBC Travel Show just featured Rwanda’s protected Gorillas. Tourists pay $1500 (US) an hour to spend time with those friendly, healthy, peaceful apes who share our DNA! Thousands of humans died in Rwanda’s conflicts. The monkeys survived and were sad. They don’t cause wars. They wonder about humans.

Now in San Diego, California USA. Humans have given COVID-19 to the Zoo’s gorillas.

Now ponder well…

1) As an addition to my lamentations at the very top: I won’t see any convictions of the GECOM alleged riggers. Won’t they live to rig another day?

2) David Hinds - from Buxton and Arizona - writes: “Our country went through its own self-examination in 2020 - a complex development…grossly simplified… underrating our collective intelligence”? Ho-ho-ho

3) Two lovely pieces which pleased me recently: “Democracy under siege” and Vidyaratha Kissoon’s creatively written work on “Dead children in the oil republic”.

4) I advise the Harbour Bridge General Manager not to wear his $900,000 bracelet when in certain parts of