The Numbers: What They Say (And Don’t)

THE 592 GUARDIAN

Accountability Journalism · Georgetown, Guyana

The Numbers: What They Say (And Don’t)

I owe Guyana’s chief statistician.  He has enlightened.  Numbers, real crackling numbers.  What happened to that other number?  The one apparently causing so much agitation that it suffers from extended constipation.  Can’t come out, cannot pass.  Many great numbers, but a vital one missing, then another.

Over a million now living in Guyana.  Growth is good.  Population growth is good for a country so rich, one lacking capacity.  Helps to close gaps, ease stresses.  A separate stress intervenes, however.  Man to man can be so unjust, as the Jamaican songster so rightly said.  All these good people counted with such diligence, yet with a difference that’s distinctive.  What were they made of: plaster or putty?  Alabaster or asbestos?  

The numbers bureau can count.  But it can’t count the kinds of people that Guyana has.  Restrained expression or subtle omission?  There was a line item about how many foreigners in the preliminary census report.  With admission about uncertainty about quantity.  I like honesty.  But what about the levels of ethnicity of the various Guyanese groups? Those contributing heavily to that million, plus 25,000 more.

It is unlikely that all of the Bureau of Numbers field workers wore highly tinted glasses.  Or, operated solely at night.  Meaning, that they couldn’t detect black from brown, and who was not so dusky but bronze.  Instead of Guyanese being presented as a rainbow, there is a bow sending an arrow to the belly: shut up and sit down.  Be invisible.  I am trying for ways to overlook the blank space in the ethnicity column of the census disclosure(s).  It could be that when questioned about their racial composition, Guyanese composed a different story, a safe one.  They identified as “Other.”  With so many Latins from the region congregating in Guyana, it would be the safest bet for Indo and Afro and Indigenous Guyanese to identify themselves as “Hispanic.”  

Whether so or not, there is this sensitivity with declaring the ethnic makeup in Guyana’s population.  If not now, then when?  If not some other time, then will it be ever? 

Another side of me ponders if this lack of ethnic specificity is a tribute to the One Guyana movement.  No separate races.  Aal ah wee is waan.  What better representation of One Guyana!

Time for a reality check.  To face the color of the local ground.  When the Bureau of Statistics is so stubbornly resistant with sharing the ethnic proportions in Guyana’s population, what’s responsible?  Study from this angle: if the traditional base of the PPP Govt had expanded to, or maintained, a comfortable numerical (percentage) edge in the local population, that stat would already be in the public domain.  A cause for quiet celebration.  Persuasive proof of electoral strength.  To put differently, a convincing source of credible electoral power.  With lesser or negligible dependence on foreign and other votes.  Ah, the mystery, more secrecy.  

My position is that the Stats Bureau’s ongoing obfuscation of ethnic numbers in Guyana is neither accidental nor due to the regular difficulties in data gathering.  Because genuine ethnic numbers, in whatever form they are, may be indicative of a narrowing of the gap between the two major ethnicities in Guyana, I think that explains the Bureau’s dilemma.  Migration, family planning, and career priorities, individually or jointly, could have reversed the statistical history that has prevailed from the inception.  Hence, the government’s anxiety about publishing the ethnic numbers/percentages.  To repeat: if old ethnic numbers held, they would be old news.  If a sea change occurred, that explains the withholding.  Nothing to write home about.

Last, the Bureau’s hands are tied.  There’s a desire to complete that public gap in its work, and get on with some of its other work.  But orders must be followed.  Amid exciting numbers, the poverty rate is another unknown. 

Where does that stand?  What does it say?  About Guyanese existence, standards, amidst a big, oil boom