GUYANESE work today with the main goal of recovering from the economic bankruptcy and social devastation that crippled our nation within the first couple decades of Independence.We don’t consider that the recovery phase of our society is ongoing, and has been going on for the past thirty years, since the Government of late former President Desmond Hoyte launched the austerity liberalisation plan, the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP).

Once we restored free and fair elections, aligning our political system and Government back on the path of democracy, once we returned to the fold of free Commonwealth nations, from 1992 to now we’ve been repairing crucial structural and foundational systems that broke down and suffered enormous stress and disrepair.
After 1992, Guyana has been on a recovery path, and that process is still going on, moving to where we could progress forward without being handicapped by our political history.

Indeed, the Rodney Commission is showcasing just how alive and relevant is that tragic history to our ability today to heal as a nation and to advance forward with a sound national psyche.
We ought to exercise empathetic understanding for Government’s constant reference back to our history, simply because our story is an unfolding process, with the past still alive enough to shape our future: we broke down as a nation, suffering incredibly bad misalignment to our structural integrity as a modern society.

We’re still recovering, and knowing this is of utmost importance to how we approach constructing the social space that would allow us to heal and move forward as a people.

The rampant systematic corruption that besets our Police Force and the Justice system and the Public Service and Private Sector, which citizens talk of constantly, grew out of and has deep roots in our political history, where the Public Service felt the brunt of our descent to gross poverty.

Our Public Service is yet to fully recover from its tragic fall during the 1970’s and 1980’s.
But all aspects of the Guyanese society got gutted, with the severe world record 89 percent brain drain crippling our ability to manage, supervise and execute important projects.
Opposition leaders bury their conscience, either lacking sound analysis of the situation in Guyana today, or disingenuously refusing to face the facts.

Of course, our politics also became broken and dysfunctional, even disabled in many ways, and the oppositional political quest for revenge and vengeance that generates strife, dissent, national ‘cussout’ and absolute distrust among Parliamentarians is but a graphic symbol of the severe beating our political system took over the 1964 – 1992 dictatorship period.
In fact, we witness the larger-than-life national symbol of our grotesque demise since Independence, in the form of Georgetown’s longest serving Mayor, Hamilton Green. Green served this country at every level of Government except Head of State, and has spent nearly two and a half decades as Mayor.
During this period, we saw the complete crippling of Guyana’s socio-economic structure, with the state of Georgetown today the worst it has been in its history.
Mayor Green complains that Central Government caused the collapse of Georgetown from a Garden City to the Caribbean’s worst capital, and a garbage-festering city. He shifts the blame about his lack of management skills over Georgetown to Government. Who does he blame for Guyana’s collapse when he served in the dictatorship Government for 28 years?
The Guyanese nation is still recovering from what leaders like Green caused in our nation.
Recovery has been painful, slower than we wanted, and full of challenges and difficulties. But recovery is happening, and we’re once more becoming the envy of the Caribbean, and our rise is seeing significant improvement in the quality of life of Guyanese.
Today, Guyana has regained its pre-Independence glory, when we ranked as the best society in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Our economy is growing as a fast emerging 21st century society; our people’s living standards increase exponentially; now Guyanese hop on a plane with ease and go to New York, Florida and Canada for vacation.
We’ve come a far way, but we’ve got a far way more to go, to completely recover from our socio-economic devastation, with which a stifling dictatorship chained us.
We must learn how to communicate these things to Guyanese citizens, and to tell the story of Guyana, not with bitterness or for cheap points, but to motivate and energise ourselves to the task of achieving the Guyana Dream, of propelling us to our latent potential.
Since the ancient days of the El Dorado myth, the potential of our land as a wealthy, advanced society became legend.
In fact, in the 1940’s, the British colonial masters had identified British Guiana as a potential place for the re-birthed Israeli nation. Guyana’s place among the developed nations of the world is not something we need to question: it’s a known fact.
We could take heart from global history, in seeing that many nations suffered incredible socio-economic collapse, and rose again, including several South American nations. In fact, the BRICS nations – India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Russia – all faced enormous crisis, and today are global powers.
We could take heart from this human ability to recover from the most devastating of shocks, and we could trust in the Guyanese resolve, hard-working character and determination to rise, and rest assured that the recovery process that is ongoing is taking us to the Guyana Dream, not just as the Breadbasket of the Caribbean, but also as a developed 21st century nation on the world stage.
Through such visions as the National Development Strategy, and our Low-Carbon Development Initiative, and hydroelectric power, and the national housing vision to see every Guyanese a homeowner, our success seems guaranteed and assured.
Guyana is recovering, and it’s vital that we know our national story, that we understand what happened to us, that we analyse and introspect about where and why we suffered our decades-long fall.
President Donald Ramotar leads from the front in this, as his Presidential Commission to probe how and why Dr Walter Rodney died in a suspected political assassination makes an emphatic point of not seeking retribution or revenge, but simply to unearth the reason why such a tragedy could take place in our beautiful, blessed land.
Our nation has recovered, coming a long way, but the socio-economic devastation was so severe and so debilitating, that we’ve more ground to cover. We’re getting there, tackling the task with assurance, confidence and that quintessential Guyanese character of resolve and determination.