Listen to Glenn Lall!
Kaieteur News – Glenn Lall, publisher of this newspaper and owner of Kaieteur Radio, has been the most outstanding voice to emerge in Guyana over the past 10 years. It now hosts its own talk radio show, The Glenn Lall Show, and is instrumental in highlighting the inadequacy of our oil sector and its government control. The public should take seriously what Lall has to say.
His intentions are selfless. If there is any man who can be held to his word, it is Glenn Lall. There is no mask involved. What you see is what you get.
He cannot be accused of using his media to further his personal ambitions. He has made it clear that he has no desire to hold public or political office. He doesn’t run for anything; the only race he is in is the human race.
Lall is not after material gain. He has made his mark by creating and building a local media empire that includes owning the country’s leading newspaper. He has achieved this without political support, above all from the government, which tried to suppress its newspaper by denying it ads of ads in the first 10 years of its existence.
What drives Lall is his conviction that we are all put into the world on purpose. He believes that God has a purpose for him and that purpose is to bring about improvement for the country and its people.
Glenn Lall is outspoken and courageous. He speaks what is on his mind and does not fear or bother if he offends anyone. He has faced persecutions and lawsuits of all kinds but these have never stopped him from being true to what he believes.
What he is saying at the moment about our oil, bauxite, gold and wood is undeniable. It is a fact that after more than 100 years of multinational corporations exploiting Guyana’s natural resources, the country has nothing to show in return.
Omai came here more than 40 years ago and said he had discovered the famous El Dorado. Guyanese believed that everyone would soon become millionaires. All the gold has disappeared and Guyanese are still waiting for the promised wealth. Other large-scale gold mining companies have set up shop but the country remains poor.
Discovering oil provided an opportunity for the country to avoid the dangers of the past. But the country’s leaders have sold us short. Lall has been revealing some of the bargains that have been made, and their lopsidedness nature. Two large oil blocks were distributed under a less-than-transparent process. Lall argues that these arrangements have brought the opportunity for a better life for present and future generations.
He wants all of this to change. And so he has been zealous in condemning what has happened. He has been advocating for a better deal. His newspaper is now dominated by knowledge of the oil and gas sector.
His assessments and analyzes are sound. There is nothing that Lall has said that has been contradicted by anyone or any authority. His newspaper has been backing his arguments with facts not only available from Guyana but from around the world.
Glenn Lall alone carries the fight for a better deal. There is no active civil society in Guyana. And so Lall has been skillfully filling that vacuum. It assumes an impartial stance. He cannot be accused of siding with any political party. He has been criticized by two of the country’s major political parties. But he is unapologetically on the side of the people and presses them to enjoy their fair share of the country’s wealth.
Lall also highlights the need to rethink the way the country’s natural resources are managed. It makes a simple proposition: when these resources are not renewable; when they are exhausted, they are lost forever. It is better, he says, to leave them in the ground, than to sell them short. Its message is not only in relation to oil but for all the country’s natural resources. He argues that foreign companies exploit this wealth and the people have not benefited from it.
Guyanese should listen closely to Glenn Lall. He may well be the person who can influence the change that the people of Guyana have been clamping for over 100 years.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)