Dear Editor,
As Stabroek News prepares to print its final pages, I am struck by the immense void this leaves in the Caribbean’s intellectual landscape. Since its founding in November 1986, this institution has spent 39 years promoting independent thought and critical thinking, bridging the gap between Guyana’s transition periods and its modern emergence and economic transformation.
I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to the editorial team, and specifically to Mr. Anand Persaud, for his invitation in 2009 to write the mid-week Development Watch columns and later the Sunday Business column. It has been a great honour and privilege, although I could not always stick with a regular schedule owing to the demands of my full-time job.
For me, the newspaper was more than a platform for public discourse; it was a vital intellectual incubator. The columns helped me engage in Guyana’s policy debates and subsequently refine my thoughts for peer-reviewed academic articles. However, it is not a strategy I would encourage young scholars to pursue given the nature of academic politics and the need to publish on popular academic themes and vibes. I would also like to sincerely thank the current editorial staff and editors of an older generation for publishing my letters, some of which were clearly not well thought out and some which I still cherish because of their continual relevance to Guyana’s economic development, political economy and monetary arrangements.
I am grateful to have been able to engage via the columns on the nature of the oil contract as well as the implications of the 75% cost recovery cap. Subsequent-ly, the government understood the time value problem and relaxed the cost recovery cap to 65% for subsequent sale of oil blocks. I disagree with activists whose main objective is to increase the marginal cost of ExxonMobil without regard to the international political implications and the immense difficulties small countries like Guyana face in an era of a brutish, ignorant and crude man at the international level. I still hold that this is the last chance Guyana will have to receive large and unprecedented foreign exchange inflows, which must be devoted towards the preservation of the coastal ecology and hinterland development where possible (something President Ali has already commenced, demonstrating his astute understanding of the key constraint the country faces).
I am deeply relieved to learn that Stabroek News will preserve its online archives. Those archives are far more than a repository of past reporting; they are living intellectual capital, even after the newspaper would have printed its last page. Students will rely on them to understand the evolution of national debates; academics will draw on them to contextualize research; policymakers will consult them to trace institutional decisions; and activists will use them to ground their advocacy in historical analyses.
Thank you for nearly 40 years of service to critical thinking and open debate, and for allowing me to be a part of the discussions.