Please save our, Brigadier’s Park!
and these Gorillas!
Hello friends – “regular” and newcomers to this man-in-the-street column – come share with me my short laments, my worries and some expectations as 2021 gains its two-week momentum.
Now it’s not the awful Coronavirus that made me refer to life expectancy in my lead heading. Life expectancy – the culmination of the life stage after birth – varies in world societies. People are living longer where the climate is consistently friendly and healthy; where local governments and communities are able and willing to provide appropriate health care, education, and employment; where quality of life determines healthy lifestyles.
And it’s not just rich development that nurtures longer life expectancies. I understand that in places like the mountains of Russia and Mongolia and China, old dudes can all “expect” to live into their mid-nineties!
Other than daily murders and traffic deaths here, what is Guyana’s current life expectancy rate? Sixty plus? Seventeen plus? I don’t really know. Please help.
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I’m wrong not to expect?
All that has been stated above is the placement of two major personal realities: In a few short days, I hope to complete another year in this country in Guyana on this planet. (Referred to as “birthday”.)
Secondly, while I would very much welcome being wrong, I do not expect to enjoy experiencing a few basics that other societies take for granted. (After voting from the sixties and the country being ruled by thirteen (13) Governments in my time here.)
Here we go: I never expect to witness government-opposition relations. Talking about “solidarity / co-operation” will continue to be hot air as the Brigadier opposition threatens its current status and fears the same for years to come. After decades I will not expect a normal civilized electricity supply. (Will oil revenue change that?)
Our Capital is still my enduring concern as my end of life. Politics will dictate no orderliness, no cleanliness, and no citizen responsibility as the Georgetown Rubbish City will remain the most nasty in the Caribbean. City Hall will never regain its architectural / aesthetic glory – as St George has – before I die. Le Repentir Cemetery will remain a national disgrace! South Georgetown roads will never be repaired. But the PPP may be overseeing the new Ogle-to-East Bank road.
Utilizing oil revenues will never be satisfactory to the opposition. I will always experience divisive drama. And magistrates will never sentence uniformly.
I will not experience any major dance bands or orchestras or choirs in this country and Guyanese songs and music are never heard in the Caribbean as Jamaican music dominates here. I’m sorry for my compatriots. Or prove me wrong before I leave.
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On Sugar, Oil, Gas
The Saturday January 09, 2021 issue of this newspaper ran a comprehensive piece on the “Major rehabilitation for the Uitvlugt sugar factory.”
I’m not sure what made me read the whole story but by the end I felt very well informed about sugar factory issues.
Look at working-class compatriots: we know the historical nature of that industry and its influence on our eventual demographics and politics and our national economy. Now we have read several analyzes about this PPP government’s decision to ‘bring back sugar’. There are plenty of letters, articles, features. I read them all. But my mind and perspective remain basic and simple. (Not too simplistic).
Like oil, sugar will retreat as an economic entity in a decade or three. The PPP must not allow its “sugar-worker worker” politics to dictate that oil revenues fund the return of sugar.
I will support the resuscitation but the Public Private Partnership (PPP) is the way to go. Try investors from India and Brazil.
And oh! Consider IEEFA’s Tom Sanzillo warnings for the premature thinking on bringing the gas ashore!
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Brigadier Park, Peaceful Gorillas.
Seriously folks, I’d like the Work and Culture (?) Ministries to pay attention to D’Urban Park in the Capital.
I do not favor the wooden stands and I am aware that the Auditor General has never found the truly accurate final cost of building the park from the jungle it was. Apparently, bad things happened.
But it remains a useful Public Poor People (PPP) facility. The whole project was never completed. Both administrations must be responsible.
The BBC Travel Show had just featured Rwandan protected Gorillas. Tourists pay $ 1500 (US) an hour to spend time with those friendly, healthy, peaceful apes who share our DNA! Thousands of human beings died in Rwanda’s conflict. The monkeys survived and were sad. They do not cause wars. They wonder about human beings.
Now in San Diego, California USA. Humans have given COVID-19 to Zoo gorillas.
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Now think well …
1) As an addition to my lamentations at the top: I see no convictions of alleged GECOM riggers. Don’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 … seriously simplified … undermining our collective intelligence”? Ho-ho-ho
3) Two lovely pieces that pleased me recently: “Democracy under siege” and Vidyaratha Kissoon’s creative writing on “Dead children in the oil republic”.
4) I advise the Harbor Bridge General Manager not to wear his $ 900,000 bracelet when in some parts of the city.
‘Till next week!