IF ONLY
Peeping Tom
Kaieteur News
February 24, 2007
I was not there at the opening of the Buddy's International Hotel. I was not invited.
The Peeper cannot therefore answer the question of a stranger on the street who wanted to know whether “young Burnham” attended. Quite honestly, I do not know who this “young Burnham” that so many people are referring to these days is.
What I do know is that quite a few pessimists are upset that this hotel has been completed. And how dare Mr. Buddy finish it in time for World Cup and so spoil those who were predicting that Guyana had bitten off more than it could chew and would have ended up embarrassing itself and the nation.
Developments over the past few years have shown the potential of Guyana to develop, so long as there is political stability. But this is not what is upsetting a lot of people. The vexation is because they did not have confidence that a PPPC government could have in so short a time, and despite the enormous political pressures, unrest and natural disasters that have come our way, so transformed this country.
What the PPP has done is to show what could have been done had we not had a government that experimented with this nation's future. This is what is upsetting some folks; they simply cannot live with the fact that a government that they expected to fail has made such impressive strides.
The PPP has shown what could have been had this country not followed that disastrous experiment known as cooperative socialism in the seventies. After all we had a tremendous headstart over all the other more developed countries in the Region.
And they too faced the same crises that we faced, including the oil crisis of the seventies and they adapted their economies and are today, small in size as they are, far more powerful and more developed that Guyana, which not only fell way behind, but was disgracefully surpassed by even some of the lesser developed countries of the region.
Guyana would have been a living paradise if we had only not tried to create a socialist revolution in this country, fake, pseudo revolution that never made the small man a real man, never empowered the poor but simply perpetuated the dominance of a few families and of course, the creation of a large bureaucratic class that bankrupted the economy and forced the mercantile class to jump ship.
A lot of people got conned in those days. A lot of people did things that they ought not to have done, bad things to the political rivals of the government of the day. These people did these things because they felt that they were part of the creation of the New Guyanese Man.
What they were creating instead was an unholy dictatorship that was preoccupied with self-preservation.
Imagine what Guyana would have been like had we built on what was there at independence. Imagine how rich we would have all been had we not become the second poorest country in the western hemisphere.
Now that we have settled some important issues and the economy is primed for a take-off it is only now, as the President said, that we are getting a lot of negative talk about Guyana .
I remember when the Pegasus Hotel was built by foreigners, most Guyanese were proud that we could have had a structure like that in the country.
I recall when the Demerara Harbour Bridge was constructed, a great many people were concerned about the ability of the then rulers to maintain the structure, concerns that were to be later justified when the bridge almost floated out into the Atlantic .
However, many Guyanese were proud of the bridge that was built and there was no bad- mouthing of this structure.
We should be all proud of the fact that we have lovely places such as the City Mall and Buddy's International Hotel. We should be proud that we have so many places of natural beauty that we can showcase for Cricket World Cup 2007. We should be proud that World Cup Cricket has finally come to the West Indies .
This shows that we are now seen as a region that is capable of hosting such events.
People are going to be impressed when they come here and they see an impressive Cricket Stadium, impressive hotels and ever-improving infrastructure.
Instead of bad-mouthing these developments, the pessimists should ask themselves why is it that they are so upset about the things done under the present government.
Perhaps if they seriously asked themselves that question, they would learn a great deal about themselves in the process.