Trinidad and Tobago media magnate, Ken Gordon, has saluted local businessmen "as the business heroes of the Caribbean" since courage and love of country have in part caused them to remain in Guyana.
Gordon was the guest speaker at the Guyana Manufacturers Association (GMA) Annual Presentation Awards Dinner at Le Meridien Pegasus on Friday evening. He said that those who had stayed should have grown stronger as happened when "we confront and overcome adversity," and he paid tribute to a number of outstanding businessmen including Chairman of Demerara Distillers Ltd, Yesu Persaud.
He said it must be extremely difficult to operate a business in an environment where economic conditions continued to slide and with the foreign direct investment falling by more than US$10 million between 2000 and 2001 and continuing to fall. With all this, compounded with fear, he said it was not surprising that a number of business people had closed and migrated.
Guyana, he said, may not have oil and gas as T&T but the vast mineral and other resources had been one of the rallying calls of the region from as far back as "we can recall."
What was certain, he said, was that the turning around of the economy and the achieving of Guyana's potential would never be accomplished as long as the current conditions of racial divisiveness and a crime situation which was out of control remained. He said he was aware of and applauded the several attempts to find solutions.
Noting that he was in Jamaica shortly after the recent elections, he said that he raised with the former University of the West Indies Vice Chancellor, Professor Alistair McIntyre, and Professor Selwyn Ryan the prospect of a bilateral parliamentary approach to tackling violence and crime in Guyana.
They both thought it might well be a good first step, whether as a separate initiative or working hand in hand with the proposals from civil society representatives.
Noting the problems of violence and crime also in Jamaica and in Trinidad, Gordon said that regardless of the differing size of the problem, crime tribalism and or racism, were issues which threatened countries including Guyana in a serious way. When crime tribalism and racism moved out of control, growth and development became a myth. As such, the role of the GMA and its counterparts in the region, he said, must be expanded to take an increasingly active part in the critical national issues which affected their countries.
In Jamaica, he said, the calls for joint action for the government and the opposition to fight crime originated from the private sector. They intensified as the situation deteriorated, but unfortunately, he said it took Opposition Leader Edward Seaga some 14 years during the period he was in opposition and after there had been thousands of violent deaths before he responded to that call.
Stating that he was unrepentant in his commitment to the Caribbean dream, Gordon said he has seen too many failures while "we buried our heads like ostriches in the sand." He has heard too many Caribbean leaders speak about Caribbean unity out of the side of their mouths one day then take action to destroy it. Last week, he said he witnessed the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, telling businessmen in Trinidad and Tobago that they believed that carnival and fetes would solve all their problems. One wonders, he added, why a Prime Minister would go out of his way to insult the people of the country to which he was invited as a guest speaker. He said it was as though the people of the region were consumed by a death wish.
In Guyana, Gordon said, there were no easy answers to the problems but hope would not return, foreign investment would not resume, and serious economic activity, growth and development would remain only good intentions until somewhere, somehow a start was made.
Developing expectations for expanded trade and economic growth would be an exercise in futility if the answers to violence and crime, racism and tribalism and indeed poverty, which is integral to many of the difficulties, were not found, he said.
As long as Guyana continued on its present path, the country ran the serious risk of being ignored by an otherwise fast expanding world.
Gordon said he knew of two Trinidad companies which thought that Guyana would be a logical place in which to expand and had actually allocated funds to do so until they did their final risk assessment. There were others who had acknowledged the tremendous potential of Guyana but would not consider any form of investment unless the environment was first stabilised.
He emphasised the urgency of taking that first step to signal a unified approach to the endemic problems which were doing so much damage to the country and said that it was not with the expectation that the problems of race and violence would disappear overnight; however it would be a tangible beginning and an unmistakable signal from the top that the leadership of the country was serious and committed to stamping out hate and violence.
He added that if closing political ranks on national issues remained unchartered waters for the peoples in the Caribbean, it was because the brand of politics until recently had been controlled by the strongman type leadership which did not recognise the need for working together with opposition forces.
Stating that these were vastly different times, he suggested that if it was the concern of every patriotic Guyanese to heal the racial divide and control violence, then the leaders, too, must recognise this and take the first step. (Miranda La Rose)