Local media must stop fiddling around and get to the meat and potatoes of oil

Foreigners have sophisticated ways of operating, which go over Guyanese heads. They observe Guyana, and hustle to give us a hand, so that we can be aware of where we are, and prepare us for the future now poised atop the national stairway. In their kindness the foreigners hold our hands, take us to school. It involves Guyana’s media. Two recent instances highlight this clever care of foreigners pitying us. It is that the media must understand and embrace its role in Guyana’s New Order. The first foreign tutoring class for local media pinpointed how Guyana has existed, still operates. It came from VICE News. The group did our work for us. It is called following leads, developing sources, gathering intelligence (without Spyware facilities); in two words - investigative journalism. Expose who must be, including group favoured, whatever the biases and prejudices. VICE News did our heavy lifting for us, and though one grand figure was shown in a less than honourable light, media ranks were given a seminar on how it is done, how the trail must be pursued, and followed to whomever it leads.

The old Guyana that VICE News exposed is as new as today’s dawn, old as national political leadership. More importantly, I think the foreigner(s) didn’t come here randomly or innocently, but purposely. They knew what they knew, and they wanted Guyanese to know. Our eternal way of doing business, our disreputable manner of conducting ourselves, our endless betrayals at the highest levels of the people’s trusts. Such has to stop. It just cannot continue, so there was what I interpreted to be that warning shot. The foreigners were warning that they see through the murk of leadership mysteries. They must stop. Because we know more. Because we don’t want anything and anyone to jeopardize the New Guyana Order. Meaning, it’s Oil Order. This New Guyana Oil Age, which demands that the old Guyana goes away. It is this unsolvable puzzle: where oil is, corruption rules. How to combat? Who to confront? Where to begin? Hard work and more hard work for local media presences largely lacking the unbiasedness, the character, that energizes oil positives for the people, not political parties.

What I concluded from the VICE exercise was that national leaders who persist with their troubled ways will be addressed