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Citizenship and patriotism
Men have stepped to the wicket and delivered. Forms filled out and passports deposited. This may not rise to the level of supreme sacrifice, but actions still rank as a highly prized piece of personal accomplishment relinquished.
It certainly says so much for this society that so many of its citizens had cause to scatter to the far winds in search of sanctuary and succor.
From low to high, this included those who marched up the ladder of position and prestige, of earning and growing personally. Now another calling comes, it stirs to respond to country calling. It must be commended, whatever the source, however long it took.
Today, there is no spoiling of that sentiment, by asking if the same would have prevailed if Guyana was not positioned where it is; so richly and so promisingly positioned.
The embedded economics of the calling and stirring, indeed the enthusing, towards returning and contributing speak authoritatively. The politics, too, has its own revelations to place on the table of public dissection.
There is nothing mysterious about those revelations, nothing profound, only an emphatic exposure of the scurrilous nature of this supposedly noblest of Guyanese calling reduced to the prostitution of principle, of people, and of one course, destructive objective after the other.
Who will rule? Who will manage the power (and the plums)? May those surrendering citizenship be differentiating.
For when the economics and politics have been addressed, there is the matter of racial demographics. Who are the broadest of broad-minded citizens then? Who are the truest, noblest of patriots in the most expansive and inclusive rendition of giving for the striving and rising of others?
Those would be the other citizens: the peasants in the far-flung villages, who wonder if the talk about oil and contracts and that corporate devil called ExxonMobil is real, or simply the mirage of another low trick played upon them by their betters. The latter would be those calling themselves leaders.
There are also the many other impoverished looking for a hand up from the doldrums of their scanty existence. It is hoped by this paper that all existing legislators and others, who may be elected in due course, remember to do a little more for the lesser citizens; those citizens who have gone nowhere, can go nowhere except to those places where they inevitably come up short; short of cash, short of basic necessities, short of the quality of life that is owed to them and their families.
May current and aspiring leaders do more for them.
The hope and vision are that grounded leaders and incoming leaders will do more for the less fortunate, by wisely utilising the cascades of cash that float up from the liquid gold now buried beneath the rivers. May that be the resurrection and ascension of all citizens of this country. This could be a challenge for leaders, a different kind of challenge.
It is not as stirring or as cheering as the public sacrifice of giving up other citizenship to offer dedicated service to motherland and homeland. Rather, it is that anachronism, that noblest of ideals: irreversible immersion in a genuine patriotism to soil and fellows, to people and future.
The future starts now, in the hardscrabble present. From the perspective of this publication, it is that indefinable, but broad discernible, strain that combines the best of citizenship alongside the most powerful and irreversible of patriotic altruisms.
We could use some of that here, just some so that the peoples of this stricken land may lift themselves up to a higher place, that proud and dignified place, which has proven to be so elusive for so long. Political leaders know what is required of them. They know by how much and how far they have fallen short.
By the same token, the hope is that the sacrifice of citizenship by political participants will contribute to an enduring self-sacrificing patriotism of the highest caliber. One that is of authentic servanthood, and of making this blessing work for the greatest possible good.
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