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Hollow Call of ‘One Guyana’
Dear Editor,
Let us be blunt: the latest pretence at scholarship from the Guyana Times — masquerading as an editorial — is not an argument but an exercise in diversion. Dressed in the borrowed robes of political philosophy, it sermonises about “assimilation,” “melting pots,” and “salad bowls” in the United States and France, while breezing past the very soil it pretends to till. One would think Guyana’s deep-seated fractures and inequities could be solved by philosophical name-dropping, rather than by confronting the raw imbalance of power that keeps one half of the country subjugated beneath a carefully polished slogan.
The essay’s premise — that the government’s “One Guyana” vision strikes a noble balance between unity and diversity — collapses the moment it meets reality. There is no balance. There is a hierarchy. Beneath the glittering rhetoric of “unity,” a two-tier system thrives — one that determines opportunity, voice, and belonging not by merit, but by ethnicity, political loyalty, and proximity to the ruling cabal. The lived experience of ordinary Guyanese, from the sugar belt to the hinterland, bears no resemblance to the sanitized utopia painted by the propagandists.
To speak of “One Guyana” in such circumstances is to mock the intelligence of the citizenry. Unity cannot be decreed by slogans or government campaigns. It must be earned through justice — through equitable participation in governance, through the fair distribution of resources, through the dismantling of the invisible wall that divides one citizen’s birthright from another’s daily struggle. Until those foundations are laid, the call for “oneness” will remain what it is: a cynical tool for power consolidation, not national cohesion.
What the Times article willfully ignores is that Guyana’s unfinished nationhood was never a result of cultural plurality, but of political manipulation. The “bricolage” of peoples who came to these shores could well have forged a vibrant and inclusive nation, had the state not been captured by a ruling class intent on weaponising difference for partisan survival. In this context, “One Guyana” is little more than a public relations costume — a convenient veil for an unrepentant system of ethnic favoritism and social exclusion.
No one is opposing unity; we are opposing hypocrisy. When genuine equality of opportunity is still a mirage, when cultural dignity is still contingent upon political alignment, and when half the country still feels like outsiders in their own homeland, then the nation must not be lulled by slogans. Guyanese citizens deserve a real reckoning — not another state-sponsored sermon about who we should be, but a forthright conversation about how we are being kept from becoming one people at all. In the end, the “One Guyana” ideology will stand or fall not by what it preaches, but by what it practices. And so far, its practice reeks not of unity, but of division wrapped in poetry — the oldest con in the book.
Regards,
Hemdutt Kumar
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the letter from Mr. Hemdutt Kumar is really, in my view, quite accurate in every regard. The verbal expression of the one Guyana principle by the government is diametrically opposite to what one actually sees when looking at the reality of the situation.
Anthony Vieira