IN Guyana – pre-1992, the average Guyanese faced a starkly hopeless future. Real estate was owned by some entrepreneurial dynastic families through great sacrifices and astute investments, some descendants of slaves and indentured immigrants who had the foresight not to sell their ancestral patrimony to others for short-term gains, and the privileged elite who were gifted large acreages of state lands in return for loyalty to the administrative construct of the day.

But the average rank-and-file Guyanese masses had scant hope of ever owning their own homes, or of emerging out of poverty; especially with the PNC Economic Recovery Programme which, among other inhibiting strictures to personal development, had frozen the wages of Public Servants at an approximate $2,000.
This was while the toothless poodle that was the Public Service Union then, and the TUC stayed inactive, until Dr. Cheddi Jagan, post-elections of 1992, told the IMF where to shove their conditionalities and restored bargaining power to trade unions.
The subsequent drive to reduce and/or altogether eliminate Guyana’s debt burden and simultaneous developmental interventions was done through engagements at various fora – nationally, regionally, and internationally; but the Jagans had achieved their hearts’ objective and restored democracy – real freedom to Guyana and the Guyanese people before being forced to succumb to their mortality.
However, they had charted the course of this nation’s future through the political infrastructure they had created and they placed this machinery into the hands of someone they hand-picked.
Bharrat Jagdeo had the simple humility of the Jagans; but he also had the vision, the strength, the courage and the commitment to chart the course of this nation forward as per the blueprint of the Father of the Nation. And he made no compromises to deliver to Guyana and the Guyanese people all that Dr. Cheddi Jagan had promised in the PPP/C Manifestos, albeit with some detours along the way to fit new and emerging challenges.
President Donald Ramotar said that the PPP has not diverted from the course of progress charted by its founding leader although some characteristics had been re-structured and re-formulated to address requisite changes in the administrative constructs and implementation of programmes created in the original PPP blueprint of Guyana’s development paradigm.
Thus Ramotar has based his Government on continuity – as per his pre-elections promises, but he has found his own challenges in a different socio-political dynamic, no less anti-developmental, destructive and anti-progressive than his predecessors in successive PPP/C Governments had to contend with.
The charge laid on the then very young and inexperienced shoulders of Bharrat Jagdeo by the patriarch and matriarch of the land has been executed, maybe even beyond their expectations.
It has not been an easy road, because the PPP/C’s stewardship of the land was severely constrained by violent protests, crime waves, volatile and inhibiting Opposition factions, including hostile media, all of which have strong links to powerful lobby groups in international spheres, and which did not engage in constructive ways with the Government to advance the interests of the nation. Instead, they devised strategies intended to derail (and sometimes succeeding) Government’s thrust to rebuild all the destroyed and devastated dynamics of this nation.
Yet former President Jagdeo can stride with head high for a job magnificently done; despite the best attempts of his detractors and the pessimists of the land, all of whom are pursuing self-serving agendas; and President Ramotar is maintaining that peculiar strength of will that has hallmarked every PPP leader.
The sad reality is that the destructive elements in this beautiful country continue to intentionally propagate hatred among the peoples of this land on the erroneous premise of discriminatory practices by the PPP/C administration against some communities, despite overwhelming and abundant evidence to the contrary.
However, most Guyanese – across every divide, throughout the land, have gotten wiser and are rejecting calls for division and strife in the land, opting instead for peace that they know will lead to prosperity and a posterity of promise fulfilled to the maximum of Guyana’s potential for greatness.