FROM being the ‘breadbasket of the Caribbean’ during the first Jagan Government, Guyana became, in local parlance, a ‘basket-case’, with Guyanese literally starving for lack of even the most basic prerequisites for proper nutrition.Today, under the PPP/C Administration, Guyana has achieved the UN Millennium Development Goal in food security, with every kind and brand of foodstuff proliferating in marketplaces countrywide, even in remote locations.

This overt sign of excellence in administrative capability by successive PPP/C Governments is replicated in all the sectors of the governmental structure; but the naysayers continually prognosticate in their ‘gloom and doom’ judgments and prophecies, issuing dire warnings of calamitous consequences to this nation if their agendas were not abided with by the PPP/C Administration.

And many of these culprits are foreign envoys – especially from the ABC countries and the European Union, even the UN (remember the infamous Gay McDougall report?), all of which seemingly, from their utterances and actions, want Guyana to return to the subterranean levels of destruction and non-development of the years under the dictatorial rule of the PNC, which had been facilitated by the scheming of the U.S. and Britain, working in collusion with the despotic Forbes Burnham.

The soul of this nation was being battered relentlessly by the overt and covert actions – such as the former U.S. Ambassador’s LEAD project, as well as threats that seek to subsume Guyana’s sovereignty by foreign envoys, who crassly and with great superciliousness, arrogate to themselves the right to interfere with and pronounce on Guyana’s internal affairs – mainly on false premises based on opportunistic allegations by the country’s political Opposition.

Thus it was that when US Charge d’Affaires, Bryan Hunt, in an exclusive interview last week with this newspaper, publicly recognised the great strides this administration has made, and acknowledged Guyana’s great truth – that the PPP/C has restored this country’s freedoms and unleashed the nation’s potential for socio-economic growth from the destruction and oppression of the past under the PNC administration, it was like a healing balm to the soul of those who suffered for decades under the PNC regime and who have, time and again, had to endure the castigations and the denouement of our country by foreign envoys.

The Chronicle quoted Mr. Hunt as saying: “Guyana has seen a dramatic transformation…since the days of the dictatorship – from no democracy prior to 1992, to free and fair elections.”
He was further quoted: “Guyana has made what I would call a dramatic transformation since 1992…Guyana has gone from having effectively no democracy prior to the 1992 free and fair elections, to a system where you’ve had several electoral cycles that have been deemed free and fair by international and domestic observers.”
Hunt, in stating that he welcomed President Donald Ramotar’s May 11 announcement as the day for holding General and Regional Elections, has tacitly accepted that the President was acting within his constitutional right and in accordance with his obligations to the nation when he issued the proclamation of prorogation that forestalled a no-confidence motion by the Opposition – a motion that would have ensued in killing the Tenth Parliament dead and leaving the nation without a government structure, bringing every administrative construct and dynamic to an immediate halt.
This would have also ensued in the instantaneous termination of all developmental projects and absolute chaos in the country, with no financial or administrative activity.
The US Charge d’Affaires acknowledged that there is yet work to be done, but was also quick to recognise that the Guyanese political leadership and public at large “must be congratulated for the tremendous transformation that I believe has happened from the days of the dictatorship to what is (now) a democratic system.”
With support from ‘friends’ like Hunt, with whom we have seen the first voice of reason – in recent times – from the enclave of the diplomatic community to have given a realistic analysis of the peculiar Guyana socio-political situation, this country could be assured that the ‘gloom and doom’ naysaying brigade will one day be silenced and relegated to oblivion.