The Pact for the Future, the Global Digital Compact and the Declarations on Future Generations were agreed to by world leaders at the UN this week. One of the stars, one of the most sought-after leaders at the UN this week was HE Dr. Irfaan Ali. Just before he took the UN by storm, President Irfaan Ali met with King Charles III at his Scotland home and he also met with several high officials of the UK Government and business. At the UN itself, President Ali participated in a meeting hosted by President Joe Biden of the USA on synthetic illicit drugs, met with the President Santiago Pena of Paraguay, the Director General of the WTO, the Secretary of State (Foreign Affairs Minister) of the US,the Minister of State of the UAE, addressed a high-level meeting with PM Mia Mottley and the Director General of the WHO on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). He will leave New York and travel this weekend to England where he will address a meeting at Oxford University on low carbon development strategy and climate change.
You would think that no matter what might be our political alignment, each and every Guyanese would be proud of our President. Guyana continues to expand our influence around the world. For decades we were known for all the wrong things – brazen rigged elections, Jim Jones and the deadly cool-aid, high debts, etc. Instead of the bread basket, we were the “basket-case” of the Caribbean. Now we are known as the world’s fasting growing economy, the country that is leaving behind its status as a Highly-Indebted Poor Country, where investors no longer dodge us like the plague and are flocking to our shores. WE have truly realized the dream of being the Caribbean’s “bread basket”, playing a global leading role in Food and Nutrition, Climate and Environmental and Energy Security. There is no country in the world not paying attention to Guyana. There is no big corporation not paying attention to Guyana.
Yet the naysayers are out in their most disgusted form.In their eyes, President Ali is wasting his time abroad.
But part of the Future Pact that the world leaders agreed to include a strategy for nature-based climate mitigation initiatives. There was once a time when we spoke about the green strategy as a response to global warming and to stop climate change. More recently, people started to tout the blue economy as a way to combat climate change.
But way back, when Bharat Jagdeo was president and we became a leader for the low-carbon development strategy, Jagdeo and Guyana was not talking about green strategies or blue strategies. He was talking about nature-based strategies. He was a visionary who saw low carbon development as comprehensively incorporating the green and blue economy.
The naysayers were critical, deeming the strategy as one coming from a man “gone mad”. In fact, when the PNC-led APNU/AFC government came into power in 2015, the disbanded and abandoned the strategy totally. They introduced a clumsy thing called the Green Economy, exposing their total ignorance in what exactly the low carbon development strategy was. Granger’s APNU/AFC government strategy has been totally proven to be disastrous and clumsy, but now the world is saying that Jagdeo’s vision of a nature-based response to stop global warming and climate change is right.
The naysayers were wrong.
CPL is in Guyana and every night millions of people around the world are glued to their television watching and wishing they were in Guyana. The atmosphere is so pregnant with excitement that it even seems to permeate the screens and fill people’s hearts with joy. Even as CPL excites a people and the world, the US EXIM Bank is about to approve a loan to support the Gas-to-Energy (GTE) Project which in late 2025 will lead to an instant 50% reduction in electricity cost for every single household and every single business in Guyana. A technical team hired by the EXIM Bank of the USA concluded after a thorough feasibility study that the project is feasible and will recover its cost in a time period that is an investor’s dream.
This is not Jagdeo or the PPP telling the country. This is an independent, high-quality feasibility study. But the PNC-led naysayers insist that the project will be a white elephant, that it is a reckless venture by the Irfaan Ali-led PPP government and that, far from reducing electricity rates, it will burden the Guyanese people with more loans.
The naysayers were so certain they were right, backed by the puerile people at two daily newspapers and on several radio and television shows, they gloated for months that the US Exim Bank will reject Guyana’s loan application. The naysayers were wrong, totally wrong.
There is not a single project since 1992 which the PPP has initiated that the naysayers have not criticized as reckless and as a total “waste”. Each of these projects have become part of people’s daily lives and an integral part of the socio-economic architecture of Guyana. The Berbice Bridge, the Hope Canal, the Marriot,come to mind immediately. The naysayers have had nothing positive to say about any project. They always find a reason to conclude Guyana will be better-off without it.
But each time, the naysayers were proven wrong.
CPL 2024 is now winding down to the playoffs and, fittingly, in Guyana and Guyana once again is in the playoffs, even with games remaining on its schedule. Players, no matter which team they belong to, and spectators, no matter who they support, agree that there is no place in the CPL like Guyana. The atmosphere is simply dazzling. Whether the Guyana Amazon Warriors repeat or not as champions, and I am betting they will, all Guyana will be proud.
What the world is watching now as the CPL is winding down in Guyana makes people want to come, not just to see the cricket, but to experience the amazing things happening in Guyana. There is a feeling, that intangible feeling, that tells you something special is happening to a country and its people. It is why Guyanese from all ethnic groups in the diaspora flocked to see and engage President Irfaan Ali in New York this week. While people like the Burke gang in New York tried desperately to put together a protest, people from Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, all parts of New York and from various other American cities interacted with President Ali.
The naysayers were abandoned. While they were moping in their desperate failure, the diaspora regaled their president, touched him and prayed for and with him. The people prayed for their country and their pride shone a light all the way to Guyana.
In a trending social media blog, people are calling the Providence Stadium the Bharat Jagdeo Stadium. Guyanese are proud of what the Providence Stadium is showcasing to the world – a nation where the people are brimming with excitement, not just because of the Guyana Amazon Warriors and cricket, but about their country.
Not so long ago, when BJ was President in 2006/2007, the naysayers among us, led by the PNC, rejected construction of the National Stadium at Providence, deeming it a “white Elephant”, a “waste of money” and a reckless expenditure of the people’s tax revenues. Today, the National Stadium at Providence is the pride of the nation. Supporters and political leaders of all political parties, Guyanese are showcasing their country through the national stadium.
Make no mistake, the Stadium at Providence stands majestic because of the vision and tenacity of a political leader – Bharat Jagdeo. It was a time when Guyana was still grappling with the suffocating impact of a burdensome foreign debt which the PNC had left on the backs of the Guyanese people, more than 900% of Guyana’s GDP, one of the most indebted nations on earth. World Cup Cricket was coming to the Caribbean for the first time. Bourda was deemed not suitable to host World Cup cricket. Jagdeo and his Government decided they would find a way for World Cup Cricket to come to Guyana. With an EXIM Bank of India loan, the stadium was built.Today, no matter who people voted for or will vote for, every Guyanese agrees that the National Stadium was a worthy investment.
But, in addition to the stadium, Guyana needed more and better-quality hotel rooms. BJ led the initiative that saw many new hotels, including the present Ramada Princess Hotel in Providence. The naysayers screamed that the government was pursuing a policy that will leave many private investors broke. Today, those many hotels represent just a fraction of Guyana’s needs.
When later, Bharat Jagdeo’s PPP Government decided to pursue a higher quality of hotel rooms to catalyze a tourism industry, the naysayers again were in top-form. They called the Marriot a “white elephant” that will become a derelict. They claimed it will never be able to have its rooms at full capacity and will become a huge expense for the Guyanese people. Imagine where we will be without the Marriot in Georgetown! Imagine that today, at least 10 new international-branded hotels are completing or about to start construction, bringing in another almost 2,000 high-quality hotel rooms.
Bharat Jagdeo was right; the naysayers were wrong, as usual.
In 2014, funding for a new Demerara River bridge was secured, a feasibility study done. Funding was secured for and construction started on the expansion and modernization of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport and the reconstruction of the four-lane East Coast Highway from Georgetown. When in 2020 the PPP came back into Government, the bridge was still a paper thing, the CJIA and the East Coast Highway were incomplete. The PPP completed those projects and by the first half of 2025, the new Demerara River Bridge will be commissioned.
The naysayers just do not learn. They are now opposed to bridge tolls being removed, a new stadium in Berbice, a new Berbice River bridge, a new hospital in New Amsterdam. They are vision-less and clueless. For them, Guyana will be better off without bridges and highways, without any new development. They want us to stay where we were in the 1960s. But people know better.
Now the naysayers who signed a bad deal with EXXON and those naysayers who were silent, who did not oppose Big Oil then, who did not oppose the one-sided deal, want to the PPP to end OIL in Guyana. These naysayers are wrong, again. I would, if I know they had any sense, tell them to rest themselves. But then, they are clueless and I would be wasting my breath.