Call it politics, statistics, antics, hysterics, or semantics. Take individually or collectively. The center of the nail’s head is still missed. For there’s that new Guyanese phenomenon, the local craze aly-nomics. There is one definition that superbly covers and captures aly-a-tics. Theatrics. Promise a nice table, then remove the tablecloth first; next, the legs one by one; and, last the whole damn table right down to the polish and the glue. Shocking, isn’t? Depressing, also. That’s aly-nomics in a nutshell. There has been voodoo economics, Reaganomics, and now the best of all, aly-nomics.
Aly-nomics in a nutshell is what many Guyanese call the size of their pay packet. Ow! A little boost would make so much difference, if only briefly. A nutshell is what Guyanese hopes have been forced into; none as much as poor ones. Tell them about oil wealth, and they think the storyteller is crazier than a bat that had a slug of High Wine. Thanks to aly-nomics, which middle name is jumbee-nomics, the man-in-the-street citizen is now forced to accept that oil wealth is rich people wealth; and, as always, the little people, the weak citizen, have to be content with the cheap, scrawny, poisoned end of the stick. It is a sharp and dirty stick that pierces savagely. With Guyanese made into losers, by those that assured citizens that when they win, the small man and woman also win. If today Guyanese cannot get a l’il raise out of this great, glorious, globally-heralded oil wealth (recall, world-class and crown jewel), then the probability is that they will never get a li’l sumthin’ from the wealth that is supposedly their birthright. Oil has to reach US$250 a barrel for that handout to arrive. For safety, better make that US$350 per 42 US gallons. Naturally, the world just came to an unnatural and untimely end. But that’s the reality of aly-nomics in a nutshell.
When money was rolling in at US$80-90 a cask, the priority was to rollout roads and bridges and tunnels. It is a fact of life that if there is no spending, there can be no stealing. Where is the opportunity?
But there has been astronomical spending, which is a major plank of aly-nomics. And where have the hundreds of billions gone, not mainly to roads and bridges. To use them to get to markets is to setup one for embarrassment. Food prices. But roads and bridges can serve as a route to someplace to stash the billions allocated for contingencies. With all the money circulating at swifter velocities, there must be contingency preparations to secret away the billions from the people clamoring and crying out for something, but not getting anything. Instead of lamenting of ‘where have all the flowers gone’, it is more personally meaningful to think of where has all the oil wealth gone. Certainly, it can’t be in the pockets of the poor people. That’s aly-nomics, friends and countryfolk.
Aly-nomics don’t operate on sentiment, don’t function on emotion and compassion. Aly-nomics is about cold-bloodedness, hardheadedness, and the baldness of emptiness. Try existing in such an environment. Here’s a holiday challenge for Guyanese who are better off. Dare to go to the house of a pensioner, or a down-and-out villager, or some other scrapper that has no money, and see for self how bare and empty are those hamlets. Look, be honest for once: how wealthy, healthy, and well are those Guyanese? How much has aly-nomics spread the wealth to their levels? It is said that water runs downhill. So, how is it, from a poor man’s position that wealth always sticks to the top, circles around there, doesn’t follow the laws of gravity? Then there’s that other callous component of aly-nomics, which pretends at gravitas, but succeeds as grave damage done to vulnerable and gullible Guyanese. Gullible Guyanese are so far gone that they will take a crocodile with a cobra in its teeth as credible. Aly-nomics has its own battle hymn goes like this. Be my friend on September 1st, and watch me change to the foul and fiendish around December 1st. And here it was that I thought that Devil’s Island was next door, a totally different Guiana. This Guyana is the real Devil’s Island, not the one on French Guiana, give praise and thanks to aly-nomics, that twisted, tortured version of economics without eatables for poor people.
Politics, semantics, and aly-nomics, a fine mess for Guyanese. Inhale deeply, hold breath, digest gases.
