PREPARATIONS continue at the Guyana National Stadium at Providence for the grand inauguration ceremony on Tuesday, May 26, of President David Arthur Granger, the country’s 8th Executive President. The second day of rehearsal for the grand event was on Friday, and according to Head Coordinator, Col. Larry London things are going very well.

He noted that when the entire cast and characters and all the actors show up at the stadium (yesterday), “I am sure we will be getting a better feel for where we are, and what we need to make this the type of event we really want this to be.”
The event which follows the Flag Raising and Remembrance ceremony at the Independence Arch on Independence Day is one that Guyanese must be proud of, and one that the new Administration would like to see “many come out to support,” London said.
“We are going to be celebrating 49 years, and it’s a proud moment. There are things that we really can do to make the Guyanese public at large feel involved, feel better about ourselves, and feel as if there is hope.”
The inauguration programme is three-fold with the first section catering solely to entertainment. “A lot of Guyanese artistes are coming out to say we want to showcase our talent and that is going to be a spectacle in itself,” London promised. The second part of the programme is more official, where President Granger will give remarks and the military will display their skills. “We are hoping, but we do not want to promise anybody that the parachute jumping will still be a feature, right now it is in limbo, because we are dealing with certain aspects of the aviation community that we are not sure about right now,” London explained.
He promised however that the entire event will be something that Guyanese would be able to “reflect on,” after it ends. “When you go home, you can talk about it, you can feel it, so this is going to be a very nice event…I really want people to come out and understand where we are, and where we are going” he said.

A number of Heads of State are expected to be in attendance at the big event.

“…one thing you will see is that the leadership of this new country will not all be sitting in the VIP stands, some of them will be mingling with the people and rubbing shoulders and sitting in the bleachers, and that is what you will see going forward, a Government for the people and by the people. They will be out there,” he said.
Meanwhile, London reported that preparations at the Independence Arch for the Flag Raising and Remembrance celebration that is scheduled for earlier in the day on May 26 are also progressing apace. “If you passed there recently, you would have noticed that the clean-up campaign is well on track; it’s moving apace.”

He promised that by Independence Day, when the renovated arch is unveiled in all its former beauty, many citizens would be amazed and will again “want to be proud of it and will be motivated to keep it clean. It is a site that we hope that when people come to Guyana, they would come to visit. That is the arch that was donated by the DEMBA bauxite company in May 1966, and we need to preserve it. We need to preserve all our National Monuments and the President has already given instructions for these things to be done,” London said.