Where did the idealism go?

Oct 02, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – There was a time when being young in Guyana apparently meant you wanted to change the country. Imagine being young and looking around and deciding that the country needed to be made better.

Imagine believing that democracy mattered. Imagine thinking that governments should be accountable, that citizens should have rights, that corruption was something to be opposed rather than something to be tolerated, and that political power was supposed to serve the people rather than provide a particularly comfortable parking space for the politically connected.

In the 1970s and 1980s, there were young Guyanese who actually believed these things. They tried to change Guyana for the better. Some of them paid a very heavy price. They confronted Burnham’s authoritarianism. They protested. They organised. They wrote. They spoke. They went to prison. Some were beaten. Some lost jobs. Many left the country. Some spent years fighting for political change when the sensible career move would have been to keep your head down and join with the establishment.

These people were not all saints. They disagreed among themselves. They belonged to different political traditions. They made mistakes. Some pretended to be multi-racial.  Some eventually became disillusioned. Some changed their politics. Some became part of the establishment they had once opposed. But whatever their individual journeys, they left behind a question: What was it all for?

Because here we are, decades later. The dictatorship is gone. Elections are held. Governments change. Presidents come and presidents go. And yet one is entitled to wonder whether we have sometimes accomplished the remarkable political feat of changing the occupants of the driver’s seat without changing very much about the vehicle. The old rulers have been replaced by new rulers. The old political machinery has acquired new paint. The old temptation to confuse government with power remains remarkably healthy.

Perhaps this is what happens when political idealism grows up. The young radical discovers the need for job security.  The protester discovers a government appointment. The revolutionary discovers that bowing at the feet of the new leaders has certain advantages. The idealist discovers that there is no ideological objection to a nice SUV. Meanwhile, what has happened to the young people who are supposed to inherit the country?  Well, some are doing exactly what young people everywhere do: trying to make a living, build a career and have a good time.

There is nothing wrong with that. But there is something worth worrying about when getting rich becomes the dominant definition of success. We now have a country in which a young person can aspire to own a fancy house,  the latest vehicle, the latest phone, the latest clothes and enough money to spend every weekend demonstrating that a liver is, in fact, a remarkably durable organ. The money is gushing. Persons who can hardly tell the head of a hammer from the handle are now making money like rice farmers after a bumper crop.

When the money is flowing this freely, asking difficult questions can begin to seem less attractive than finding your own piece of the river.  Where are the young people who want to challenge the oil contract? Where are the students demanding to know how the country’s natural resources are being managed? Where are the voices asking how is it that we are paying $400M for a bridge that would have been free to us in a few months?

Where are the young lawyers, engineers, economists, environmentalists, journalists and entrepreneurs willing to say publicly that an extractive economy must also be an accountable economy? Where are the people prepared to ask uncomfortable questions about what happens when billions of dollars begin flowing through a small society? Where are the young people exposing and questioning how some government officials have become so rich?

And, perhaps most uncomfortable question of all: Where did the idealism go?

It would be unfair to say that it disappeared. There are young Guyanese who I am sure are engaged, courageous and determined to make a difference. But they can sometimes seem strangely lonely. They take a stand, and they are isolated. Even by their own friends and families. Being a radical, they are reminded is a thankless and solitary profession. Perhaps this is because young Guyanese do not have role models from the 1970s and 1980s.  Many of those who challenged dictatorship and authoritarianism in Guyana themselves succumbed and let their idealism recede in the quest to survive. In other words, they betrayed their own idealism and left little moral inheritance and inspiration for the present generation.

And that is the tragedy facing our young people today. They have few role models to draw inspiration from. And that should be of concern at present. Because oil can make a country richer without making it freer. It can build roads without improving the lives of citizens. It can, as it is doing, producing overnight millionaires who care little about inequality.

And perhaps the greatest danger is not that young Guyanese will become too interested in money. It is that they will become convinced that money and having a good time are the only things worth being interested in. Sooner or later, every generation gets the government it tolerates, the political culture it accepts and the future it is willing to demand. And if our young people are no longer asking what kind of country they want to build, perhaps the question isn’t where the idealism went. But rather which is the generation that taught them they didn’t need it.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• corruption, idealism, Peeping Tom, rights

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