Is this the Guyana you want your children to inherit?

Feb 25, 2013 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
This awry democracy that the government boasts about so often is nothing more than a creeping fascism that is closing its grip on our liberties, rights, resources and our citizenship. There is a large gap in the professed ideals of democracy by government compared to the realities we experience and witness on a daily basis in our beloved Guyana. Government has failed, and continues to fail in bringing promise and practice into closer alignment. One such promise was the creation of hundreds of jobs for our Guyanese people who are greatly affected by high levels of unemployment with the building of the Marriott Hotel. When such promises are made to the people whose tax dollars are being used to bring into fruition such a project, and the government with the constitutional mandate to serve the interest of the people, fails to honour and deliver on a promise to its people, have the audacity to provide a nonsensical and ludicrous excuse to justify their doing, it speaks volume of the government’s position on its interest of the wellbeing of its people.
Sadly, the opposition too is heading in that direction. What is most troubling is the large gap and remoteness between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics.
I am petrified and at the same time, flabbergasted by how government and opposition are so easily distracted by petty and trivial things. Their chronic avoidance of taking a more serious approach with the real issues that are affecting and plaguing our citizenry, such as large scale unemployment, crime, an unprecedented level of corruption, domestic violence, VAT, high cost of living, the gratuitous assaults on the poor, government’s cavalier spending of taxpayers’ monies and a broken education system that continues to fail our future work force, is evident. Their inability to build a working consensus to tackle the real people issues continues to denigrate this beautiful land of ours. These political gamesmanship and uncalled for egoistical battles of our elected representatives continue to contribute to our country’s state of affairs.
I am equally disappointed by the poor level of professional and parliamentary decorum that is slowly becoming a constant feature in the august assembly of our parliament.
It is time for the people of Guyana – all races, class and status – to take up that right to recall government and elected officials to their duty and their obligation, and above all, to exercise that right to share in the decisions of government – decisions which shape our lives, everything that make one’s life worthwhile such as family, work, education, how we raise our children and how we rest our heads.
We as Guyanese must be conscious and cognizant of the ever-present fact that it is the government of the day that shapes one’s life with the decisions ‘we’ as a people allow it to make. When as a people we fail to act and demand that these elected ‘servants’ carry out their respective constitutional mandate, it only empowers them to not heed to the demands of the people.
Government’s relentless pursuit to go ahead and build the Marriott hotel even in the face of resounding criticisms from the opposition and many in the media is testimony to this regard. It also leaves many to wonder what their hidden agendas are.
The time has come; the time is now, for government and opposition members to individually and independently commit some time to seriously do some soul-searching or introspection and ask themselves if this is the Guyana their ancestry would have died for? If this is the Guyana they would want their children to inherit?
If the government, opposition and we as a people cannot rediscover our traditional virtues of hard work, co-operativeness, patriotism, and individual responsibility, then the dream and the essence of the words carved in our motto of “one people, one nation, one destiny”, would never be attained. It would be nothing more than a fleeting illusion.
Jermaine Figueira

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