Prior to the 2020 elections in Guyana, Guyanese were sold a pipe dream. They were promised a life of rapid economic transformation and luxury that got them overly excited. But more than two years after oil starting flowing out of Guyana, and after over 700,000 million US dollars in oil revenue, little, if anything, has changed for the better for the general Guyanese population.
So what might be the cause of the pipe dream? One theory is that media need to sell copies. Creating hyped up and overly sensational stories are one way to go viral, producing hits and ultimately advertising revenues for websites, and sales for printed copies.
Another theory is that some unseen force was trying to create a civil war in Guyana so that they can rape the country’s resources under the nose of the people while fighting is going on. If the people of Guyana are extremely worked up over the prospects of “wealth beyond their wildest dreams,” neither political parties might want to give up power – pushing the country into a civil war. Well, that theory may be plausible since Guyana was indeed pushed onto the brink of a civil war in 2020. At least one person lost his life, and many were injured. Thankfully, the conflict didn’t escalate into a full scale war, and that is partly because Guyanese have evolved since the 1960s.
The third theory is that rapid economic transformation for Guyana is indeed well within our reach, but the government in power is not managing Guyana’s resources with the interest of the people at heart, or they are grossly mismanaging the country’s wealth. Possibly, corruption may be happening at the highest level with Guyana’s wealth being siphoned out to a select few.
And fourthly, it could be a combination of all of the above factors.
Whatever the case may be, the reality that is unfolding in Guyana is nothing that the Guyanese people were expecting between 2016 to 2020 – when the entire population was waiting and watched eagerly, with hearts pumping with excitement, for Guyana’s “first oil.” To put it simply, Guyanese were sold a pipe dream.
