The citizens of this country should be very grateful to the Touchau, Councillors and residents of the small Amerindian village of Karaudarnau in the Rupununi, because they were the ones who stopped the Parabara road, being built by a Brazilian, from being driven through their lands. And the Parabara road was almost certainly connected to Muri Brasil Ventures Inc’s prospective mining operations in the New River Triangle. The road was headed in that direction, and would hardly have been required just for surveying purposes; clearly it was being constructed in anticipation first of prospecting activities, and then of mining.

It will be remembered it was because of the Parabara road that the whole Muri debacle first came to public attention.  When the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) asked questions about the road the story began to unravel, with officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment writing letters to the press which appeared to try and deflect attention from Parabara by making reference to a different road in the deep south.

This confusion of roads, so to speak, was not lost on some observers, who adverted to the fact that the road the ministry was alluding to was not the Parabara road. Minister Robert Persaud met the GHRA on Parabara, and according to what the association said at a later stage, misled them in relation to their questions about mining operations in the area.  He had earlier appeared before the parliamentary Natural Resources Committee, where subsequently he was accused there too of being a great deal less than candid about the mining situation in the New River.

The truth, however, came to light after Stabroek News published details about the Permission for a Geological and Geophysical Survey in the Triangle granted to Muri by Minister Persaud. Given that the permission more-or-less guaranteed up to 18 prospecting licences should the company apply for them, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the intention was to open up the New River Triangle for mining after the necessary preliminaries had been executed, but to keep that fact from public scrutiny until it was too late to reverse the decision. The PPP’s political connection with one of the principals of the company only serves to aggravate suspicions about the motives for the issuing of the permission in the first place, which as said above, would in due course have led to mining.

It has to be acknowledged that the precise position of the entire cabinet, not to mention President Donald Ramotar, on the matter of mining in the New River is a little murky after Public Works Minister Robeson Benn refused Muri a permit to build an airstrip in the Triangle, and then subsequently said the denial was in line with government’s policy for the area and because of security concerns.

So what is government’s policy in the area? Are we to understand that Minister Persaud went ahead in defiance of government policy? Dr Roger Luncheon had already let it be known that a decision had been taken to open the area to mining at the end of former President Jagdeo’s term and that not everyone in the cabinet was in agreement with this. He later attempted to backtrack on this, but whatever it was he intended to say, he said what he said. In his final press conference for last year in an attempt to reconcile the two positions, he told the media the no-mining policy in the New River was not cast in stone.

This still did not dispel the confusion as to what government policy is currently, or what it will be for the foreseeable future. In the meantime the public awaits some explanation about the sequence of events and exactly how this permission came to be granted.

Of course, after Muri decided to abandon its permission Minister Persaud wasted no time in telling the miners that this was part of a campaign against investors in their sector. “My question is who and what is next?” he asked theatrically.  One can merely remark that the only thing which might deter bona fide investors would not be Muri’s withdrawal, but the clandestine nature of their investment, since regular investors would want the protocols to be observed and would be uneasy about any deviation from standard good practice.  As for the shadier operators, we don’t want them investing ‒ do we?

Then there was the Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, who blamed the opposition for the Muri pull-out. He described it as “the latest example of the harm being inflicted on Guyana’s developmental prospects by APNU and the AFC’s attack against investors in Guyana.”  He clearly was asleep while this whole saga was under way, and is apparently indifferent to the nature of those investors, whether their investment is in line with government policy or whether there are security concerns accompanying their investment. Such a cavalier approach seems hardly typical of the usual sober-minded Minister of Finance in a normal democracy.

Even the President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry apparently found it necessary to add his voice to the chorus of support emanating mostly from the mining industry for Minister Persaud, although he did express a reservation in relation to the Guyana-Norway agreement. However, he dismissed security concerns outright, describing them as a “non-starter.”

Unfortunately, like several others he homed in on the wrong security matter. Suriname does not come into question at this point; as has been said before, the issue is Brazil and Brazilian miners, although they might be joined by members of other nationalities as well. There is illegal mining being carried out on some scale in various Amazonian countries, and Mr Urling must be better informed than the GDF if he believes that we are in a position to protect areas like the New River Triangle from a flood of foreign miners once these are opened up.  If Venezuela is having great difficulty controlling illegal mining, what makes him think we would do better?

This government has been involved in a whole series of opaque deals, more particularly after former Mr Jagdeo became president. We do not appear to have changed course, and the Muri permission together with the Parabara road are especially problematical given that they raise such major security and environmental concerns and would have had such an impact on the indigenous people of the far south of Guyana. The question is, are there more of these kinds of deals in relation to our interior, that take no account of the interests of the people or the country, yet to be uncovered?