WE Guyanese love our nation and enjoy our land.

But we don’t hear that from ourselves. We tend to talk of problems we face, and we resort to a complaining attitude rather than one of vibrant creativity.
We are the way we are because of this habit of talking ourselves down. It starts with how we approach our leaders, how we see our Government, how we think of ourselves as a cultivated, honorable people occupying a blessed corner of the earth.
The foundation for a healthy society in this 21st century is a Guyanese Government elected through free and fair elections. Add to that the structural democratic systems such as a free and independent national media landscape, freedom of movement and freedom of expression, along with the equal opportunity for every Guyanese to prosper through self-development and personal empowerment, and we see that Guyanese are well-positioned in the world today.
We’ve repaired a huge chunk of the systematic breakdowns we suffered from 1964 to 1992. We’ve set ourselves on a course to become again the best in the Caribbean, a socio-economic regional powerhouse of incredible fortitude and resolve.
Today, we’ve moved so far away from ranking at the bottom of the ladder, along with Haiti, in the Western hemisphere. Today, we’ve risen to rank as absolutely the best economy in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Our education system produces the top student in the entire Caribbean, year after year.
As President Donald Ramotar told residents in Berbice this week, for nine out of the past 10 years, Guyana topped the Caribbean at Regional exams, with a lad from Cotton Tree, West Berbice, winning the Best Technical Student award in the Caribbean.
Instead of sitting around bemoaning our imaginary sad state, we ought to look around, pay attention to our place in the grander scheme of the world, and see that we’re not so badly off after all.
What more could Guyanese ask for? We’ve got a thriving national housing programme, and Government’s goal is for every Guyanese to own land and property. We’ve got an education system that is producing outstanding international scholars. We’ve got a health care system that is adding new dimensions every year. We’ve got a mushrooming building boom that is seeing the development of the Marriott, and countless luxury buildings all across Georgetown and urban areas. We’ve got Guyanese building solid residential homes full of style and unique designs. We’ve got a culture now of driving, instead of a preponderance of public transportation or long walking to get around.
Our nation simply needs to know exactly where we stand. Our farmers are plowing and reaping the land, with rice production soaring towards the million ton target. Government is preparing to pump $20 billion into the sugar industry, to bring on stream alternative energy like ethanol production, to subsidise the low international price for sugar, and President Ramotar is confident the Skeldon sugar factory would become the “flagship” of the Commonwealth Caribbean sugar industry.
We’ve got a vision for Linden, to propel the mining town to a place where enterprising citizens could benefit from projects like the Amaila Hydro power project.
Our country operates entrepreneur programmes for women; we push for our young people to develop and grow; we built an athletic track at Leonora for our national athletes; we constructed an Olympic swimming pool for our young to become world class swimmers; our banks operate under secured legislation to fund micro-enterprises and small businesses; a number of non-governmental agencies operate all manner of programmes to shape and design the lifestyle of our people.
Do we ever see any of this in the media?
We must come to a point where we start projecting the stories of ordinary Guyanese in the media. We’ve got to inculcate a new culture within the Guyanese body politic, whereby the politicisation of the society becomes secondary to the living, vibrant human interest stories of people, living and breathing the pure drama and exciting adventure of the human heart.
All we see in our country is politics and politicians, and from the Opposition a form of politics and politicking that damages how we appreciate our nation.
At some point we’ve got to wake up and realise one simple fact: Guyana is about Guyanese, the people of the land. We vote into Government the best Party we think would govern us, and whatever mistakes or human flaws that our leaders exhibit, that’s our choice, to put them in charge of managing our society.
We cannot harbor a whole swath of folks running around demoralising and demotivating us, pointing their rigid nasty fingers only at that point of our national consciousness, that blank point that is all politics, focusing our attention on nothing but politics.
We elect our Government to govern us, and we should allow them to govern. It is stupid for Parliament to cut Government’s Budget. In any other society, Parliament seeks to increase State budgets, rather than reduce spending on social programmes benefiting citizens.
But we so focus on the politicisation of our society that we reduce everything to politics, ignoring the vast amount of economic, social and cultural activity that brings our nation alive.
We hardly see the stories of ordinary Guyanese fill the airwaves or our newspapers and magazines or our online news sites, unless those citizens get caught up in some sleaze and slander or gossip and gore.
We want to see our media landscape regale us with our Berbice farmers, our rice cultivators, the land owners of Black Bush Polder who plant every square inch of their land with fresh organic fruit and vegetable; we want to see the residents of Linden going about their daily lives; we want to see Barticians, Essequibians, Morucans in our national media: how are Guyanese living and enjoying nine consecutive years of socio-economic growth?
We Guyanese want to see our stories abound in the land. We know how we benefited from the development of the nation’s social and economic systems and structures over the past decades. We want and aspire to tell our stories to each other. Like we talk to our neighbours, we should be talking to each other through the airwaves and newspapers and Internet.
We love our land. We know we’re of a blessed country. And, in this 21st century world, we want to participate in the national conversation, engage in a two-way dialogue between the politicians we elect, and ourselves.
We don’t want politicians to pontificate to us from Parliament about our Government. We want to tell our stories of how we see our lives transformed from the devastation of life under the regime of rigged elections, to what it is today under our free and fair Government. Today, we travel to the US and come back home. We love our Guyanese nation. In telling such stories, we transform how we see our position today as a rapidly rising Guyanese nation. In telling our stories to each other, we the people cultivate the atmosphere of the land, just as we vote for the Government of our choice.