Choosing for the future-just go out and vote

Mar 02, 2020 Editorial

Today is that long awaited day fought for and struggled for, where eligible Guyanese voters will step forward and show that of which they are made. Voters, after all the agitations and spiritual disturbances, can remain as before, or they can stand for a future that is governed in cleanliness, fairness, and wholesomeness. Will this hour of decision, this moment of destiny be different?

We had better be, if we are going to give this country a chance to capitalize honestly and constructively on its bounty. If we are going to give ourselves the opportunity to claim our long delayed place in the sun, where we rightly belong, but have always been thwarted from experiencing. However citizens vote today, the future of oil, the future of this society, the future of our own relationship with each other will be laid out for decades to come, for the generations that follow.

Today, we at Kaieteur News reach out to brethren across this cherished nation of ours to encourage and insist that we make a powerful effort, like never before, to find the wisdom, the common sense, and the vision that we hold our individual and collective destinies in our hands, and that we must not flinch, we must not fear, and we must not do any other than what is best for family and country.
Matters boil down to that simplest of exercises: affixing an ‘X’ in the space reserved for such a life-altering, life-enhancing decision. We can go the regular old way, and that is the right of every citizen, the precious nature of the choice allowed in any free society. In so doing, we would have committed to the old standards and the old results, which have always led to nothing other than the usual same old squabbling and fighting that drag all into the gutter of the sorriest of existences.
Or we could dare to venture into unknown territory, frightening in its newness, yet promising as to what and how we could be. From all the reports and indications, all the evidence, there appears to be few in our midst, who have committed to such an unprecedented course of action. The loyalties and fidelities are too strong, while the imaginations of what could be personally rewarding may be just too much to be denied.
So what will it be today? How will we-you and me, voting citizens all-approach ballot box and prove to be? The next 48 to 72 hours should furnish the answers, as to whether the electorate of this country decided to stay the course with what has hurt; or whether its members have somehow found the stirrings to step from the traditional and then having so found have actually responded by going another way.
Before this most decisive and vital of week would have run its course, the nation will know which way has been chosen, which way we will go. Depending upon the sum of the choices made, we could be sailing into the future on a lake of oil with a clear course charted, and that all such could mean for the poor, repeatedly disappointed peoples of this land. Or it could be that such trust was placed in arrangements and stewards, who will pilot us to some place on a darkened sea of negligence and irresponsibility, and of the routine abandonments and the normal treacheries that never fail to rear its ugly political head.
We have made much noise; many were the sounds and furies of the last year and more. Today will tell whether the volumes of voice and ink were that of frauds and hypocrites of the most self-deceiving sort, or whether we do mean something that breaks away from the cords of the cradle.
Guyanese, all of us, need the deep nature and the thorough commonsense to be willing to embark first, and then progress towards a different present today, and a more encouraging future beyond today. Let us take full advantage of this national holiday declared to allow for free, fair, and peaceful elections. Let us do our duty, if only to give ourselves an honest chance to a constructive future.
Whatever the preference, just go out and vote honestly.