Dragon unlikely to dance?

THE EDITOR: With the screaming headline in the dailies of February 28 about the likelihood of the Dragon not being able to dance, I would like to emphasise that this letter which in its inspiration is neither anti-TT nor pro-Donald Trump.

Instead, it is an insight into effective leadership or the lack thereof in this country in so far as reading the political implications of a continuing relationship with a Nicolas Maduro regime, which has been on the wrong side of a Trump administration, then in 2016 and now 2024.

Such leadership would have been guided by a more than generous Joe Biden administration like with the licence granted in 2023 to NGC and Shell to develop and export natural gas from the Dragon gas field, but the Trump administration is already showing signs that it would have none of it, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on February 26 announcing that all Biden’s gas licences involving PDVSA have been cancelled.

Should the local leadership not have anticipated this development and planned accordingly? The infrastructure for oil and gas has always been there, but did our over-reliance on the Venezuelan connection cause us to become negligent, not providing the necessary incentives for its development?

The ironic contradiction of all this is that we still continue to see ourselves as a gas and oil economy – hoping that the Dragon would breathe fire – and not diversifying the economy to include agriculture, cottage industries, tourism and the like. But with the Trump administration so anti-Maduro, what can we say about our future in this respect?

Trump will do what he feels he is obliged to do for his country “to become great again.” Can we afford to moan and groan over the fallout from such or seek to realign ourselves to get into the good graces of his administration for the good of this country?

That is the true test of effective leadership.

DR ERROL NARINE

BENJAMIN

via e-mail

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