THE Citizenship Initiative (TCI) has announced Rondha-Ann Lam as its presidential candidate for the elections in March 2020.  Lam, a mother of three, is an educator with 20 years experience and a founding member of TCI.

Lam holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree with distinction from the University of Guyana, majoring in Literature and Linguistics, with a minor in Communications.  She also holds a Diploma with distinction in Teacher Training Certification from Cambridge University in the UK, and speaks five languages.

A release said the TCI presidential candidate will be leaving her post as Head of Department of English at Marian Academy at the end of this month.

She will be leading a small team of TCI members and executives engaging with members of the diaspora in the upcoming week before returning to finalise the launch of the party’s website and development plan.

Rondha-Ann Lam said in the past seven weeks since she was tasked with delivering the feature address at the launch of the Citizenship Initiative as a contender in next year’s elections, she has discovered just how much of a blood sport politics can be in Guyana.

“In simply taking the decision to become deeply involved in national politics as leader of a fledgling political party, I was offered a choice between going forward on the path I had chosen or continuing my teaching career of two decades.

“It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make, one that came with the one human thing that Roosevelt did not mention as natural to the arena – tears.  In a little over 20 days, I will part ways with a career that I have built for over 20 years because our politics is not mature enough to allow me to serve both the people of our country and continue to serve the children I have given all of my adult life.
For the man in the arena of Guyanese politics, the challenges to overcome are many – the critics, the compromised gladiators, the vested interests, the bestial violence, and often the people themselves,” she said.

According to Rondha-Ann Lam, these challenges multiply themselves for the woman in the arena. For the woman in the arena, mere ambition is not enough, she said, pointing out that she will have to prove three things in sufficient quantity, namely integrity, intelligence and courage.

The TCI leader said when another female presidential candidate, Dr. Asha Kissoon emerged from a newly-formed party two weeks ago, she waited with bated breath for the impact of what should have been celebration of the breaking of a glass ceiling to be felt in Guyana.

“I wrote a message of congratulations from TCI to her and posted it on our Facebook page. What we saw instead, particularly from supporters of the status quo, was a degradation of her qualifications (a mere doctor) from some men, and discussions about how she’d manage a whole country during her menstrual cycle, surprisingly from women.

“I am a trained and educated teacher; I speak several languages; I have spent a life in service educating the children of this country; I am a leader of a new political party made up of competent young people who have unanimously selected me for a great responsibility.  What I expect this will boil down to is that I will be called a mere teacher leading a group of amateurs wanting to lead the army, the police force, manage the resources of this country and the 700,000 strong people of this motherland.

“As an executive of a newly launched political party, I have watched as we faced the same accusations of political adventurism that every single party in this country no doubt faced in the beginning, from the original PPP in the 1950s, to the WPA in the 1970s, and the AFC in 2006.  We have answered those criticisms with policy and will continue to do so when we launch our development plan earlier this month,” she said.

As a woman leader in a newly-launched political party, the TCI leader paid homage to the brave women who went before her decades ago, women like Janet Jagan, Christina Raj, Jane Phillips Gay, and Jessie Burnham.

She expressed solidarity with young women in the political leadership of parties now, women like Dr. Kissoon, Thandi McAllister, Tabatha-Sarabo Halley and Priya Manickchand.
“When I return next week, we will begin our very necessary conversation on policy that deals with constitutional reform, with public integrity, with equitable economic growth and diversification, with a transformative education system, with national reconciliation and with leadership in international affairs,” Rondha-Ann Lam said.