By GHK Lall- Even how many citizens residing in the Republic? C’mon, Mr. Jagdeo! I can understand a whole host of other things that must be kept under lock and key, but the results of a national census also, Dr. Jagdeo? Understand, not agree, to be clear. Where is the threat? What kind of foul could be so feared, Captain Vice President? If a census is the latest, then what is next on the secrecy agenda? Cozy chats about this and that relative to the darker side of oil with Alistair Routledge of Exxon Guyana? The last question is rhetorical, me simply ensuring that still trusting Guyanese have a full picture of how their confidence in political leaders is, er, used against them.
What’s a census, if not a count of how many people like me, like my neighbours in Georgetown, and my brothers and sisters all over the place. The Guyana family is a sprawling affair. Even someone like me who hardly has any relations here, have a few who I can claim kinship, and they bravely with me. To set everybody right, many of them don’t look like me; some don’t even sound like me, with lilt of Spanish in their articulations and modulations.
How hard is it to conduct a count and then compile the composite? Of Guyana and its segments and fractions and percentages? I am willing to bet scarce money that Dr. Cruz and company over at the census house know how to account for all the elements and components and have that master profile already in hand. In fact, after two years, it could be getting mildewed in the mind and cobwebbed in the hand, Dr. Jagdeo.
So, what’s the holdup, Skipper Jagdeo? Why what looks like yet another hijacking of the thinking of the Guyanese people, Mr. J? If something as ordinary, as simple, as a census result is the source of so much anxiousness that it has to be kept behind a steel curtain in the Bank of Guyana vault, then I can only imagine how much Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo cowers when Darren Woods and Alistair Routledge look at him with a glint in their loving Texas eyes. This census business, i.e., the results being held under a thick blanket of secrecy for two long years, does reveal the fear and trembling in the PPP General Secretary and the Guyana Government’s chief oil minister of oil and gas (a lot of gas).
My thinking is that a Kremlin tutored economist of the küresel stature of Bharrat Jagdeo would be most at home with addition and subtraction, percentages and demographics and the like. Yet, here he is today in 2025 as silent as a sitting serpent with that census result. If he has ever been transparent, this is one of those times. Transparent in what must be hidden at all costs, and by any means, just so that no Guyanese gets the wrong idea.
I am trying to figure out what is there not to like about a census and its results. Perhaps, I should make an inquiry of the US Embassy or take a peek at those State Department numbers for a period of years, for the little census light that is needed. Since neither the government nor Jagdeo (he is the guvment) is forthcoming with the census numbers, then there is only one interpretation left for the determined and now long-running resistance to publishing the results.
I put it as a question first: how much is the difference between the two major electoral presences in the Guyana demographic? I arrive at a conclusion based on Dr. Jagdeo’s blank expression (worried also) relative to the census results, which have now transformed into another dogfight, a junkyard dog one. I think that the numerical difference between Indian Guyanese (forgive me if I have that wrong) and African Guyanese is now so close as to be almost negligible. Razor thin just became more than a close shave; it is now a nick on the face, then another.
I assert so, because the irrefutable fact is that primarily one kind of Guyanese have been bailing out of this country without letup even now that the PPP is back in power and there is oil under the riverbed. Now this should explain why there is all this hullabaloo about cash grants. One out of nowhere and not even for cost-of-living relief. Thanks for the rare honesty. The confirmation of the census deficit (from a PPP perspective) came with that first cash grant.
The next piece of the census puzzle fell in place on New Year’s Day, thanks to Mr. Showman, President Ali. More cash grants coming and in this year. Mouth open, story jump out. The economist in Jagdeo found a way to overcome the statistics in the census. One, two, three cash grants and all in elections year 2025. What census deficit, folks, when the overseas votes now feature highly?
Guyanese are being paid to vote. Not for the PNC, but the cup from which all that cash flows. One cash grant for the plane ride. The second US$500 for drinking rum and slumming around. And the third US$500 to celebrate victory for the PPP snatched from the jaws of defeat by Jagdeo. Errol de la Cruz can keep his census results. Best wishes to Guyanese for a smooth elections process (and count).