Budget 2023 is a step in this direction

Dear Editor,

More than half a century ago, the distinguished French historian Fernand Braudel developed a temporal model of the world capitalist economy. In so doing, he specified three temporal rhythms; namely, the histoire événementielle, the conjuncture, and the longue durée. These translate into the short term, the medium term, and the long term.

I contend that the APNU+ AFC are focused on the short term, something if adopted and operationalised, would be disastrous for Guyana, oil or no oil. As Braudel was fond to point out, the short term is that of the journalist, meaning a focus on recent events rather than the dynamics of structural change. For Guyana to lift itself out of the punishing injuries of poverty, it must adopt policies mindful of the longue durée, but articulated around the opportunities and constraints emanating from the world system above, and from the balances of social forces below.

Braudel also employed the concept of mentalities which designated the cultural outlook of elites. Elite culture, of course, has a huge influence on mass culture. This issue is of special significance to Guyana. The APNU+AFC, with their focus on consumption and on sharing out all the revenues earned from oil and gas, could infect the general population with this ideology of ‘spend-today-go-bankrupt-tomorrow.’

Thus far, the Guyanese people have resisted this crash-course in wild spending. In fact, feedback from across the country indicates serious commitment to long term investments in infrastructure. Everywhere you go, people want a balance between high incomes today and investments in education, healthcare, security, and transportation, all of which would produce results for generations to come.

Guyanese writers are fond of likening our chances to those of Singapore and the Gulf States. I can assure we are not going there anytime soon, because those are special cases. More on this later. What we do know, however, is that countries such as Malaysia, which invested heavily in education and other kinds of infrastructure, were able to leapfrog at least one of W.W. Rostow’s stages of economic growth, based on a theory with the same name.

It might be instructive to know that the New Economic Policy in Malaysia from 1971-1990 was partially in response to ethnic conflicts there in 1969. The state committed substantial portions of the budget to education, with heavy emphasis on greater inclusion for the native Malays, who had hitherto not been fully ‘assimilated’ into the national development plans.

Similarly, today, the PPP/C’s 2023 budget is placing heavy emphasis on access to building out the infrastructure for Indigenous students as well as students in rural areas. Note that 70% of our population live in rural and hinterland areas.

The myopia of AFC economic thinking was clearly expressed in the speech of leader Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan. Early in his speech, Ramjattan used the word “paradigm” to describe the new revenues from oil. The word was misused, or at best it was not used in the conceptual sense intended by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn described the traditional, customary, expected and institutionally protected knowledges or ways of doing things (methods) as “normal science”. A scientific revolution occurs when those established ways are jettisoned and replaced by new ways of thinking; which is to say, when there is a structural movement resembling a shift in tectonic plates, RATHER than mere quantitative changes within the extant system.

A new paradigm implies abandonment of the old ways, old questions, and old answers. Instead of mere quantitative changes, there are qualitative changes, these last being more about the longue durée, pace Braudel.

In typical normal science fashion, Mr Ramjattan and APNU leader Mr Aubrey Norton see the new oil revenues in the same old ways, excepting for alteration of volume, of quantity. Put differently, they see more money, but want to do the same old thing, which is to spend it all out today, without concern for what comes next year, or in the next generation.

Both President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo, as well as Dr Ashni Singh, have been tireless in trying to get not only the Guyanese people, but the Opposition to understand that new and more money does not necessarily guarantee prosperity. Their efforts go beyond explaining the dangers of Dutch disease or the resource curse. They ask different questions, the primary one being: How do we, as a people, use the oil and gas resources to chart a different, long-term course of socio-economic development that would be both economically and environmentally sustainable?

Their answer is one that might be best described as responsible pragmatism. Here the emphasis is on improving the human security of individuals and communities by investing in those salient dimensions of personal and community wellbeing that are self-reproducing.

The current world system is such that our resources are not necessarily at our full disposal. There are national governments, multilateral organisations, and social forces often in the form of NGOs that seek to manage our affairs from afar. We live in a world system grounded in, and governed by, hegemonic practices where national sovereignty can be severely compromised. This is why a big part of the new paradigm is us standing as one.

The limits of the possible are not of our own choosing, yet we must navigate this same system of economic and political power through the excellent quality of leadership at our disposal, combined with the resolve of a nation that stands together. Now, that is a new paradigm. Budget 2023 is a step in this direction. Oil is not merely an event; it must bring forth, and has brought forth, innovative ideas in this current conjuncture.

Sincerely, R. Persaud