THE tumultuous welcome accorded President Bharrat Jagdeo wherever he goes in this country, and wherever the Guyanese Diaspora congregates, bespeaks a popularity born out of trust. Emerging out of the night of a depressed economy into the sunray of hope for a better future, the Guyanese people across the land are recognizing that racial conflict and negative politics have no role in the ultimate truth, and that only as a united people can Guyana prosper and our economy become strong enough to sustain us against internal and external adversities.
At the meeting with the President at Watooka House during a Cabinet outreach in Linden on Saturday last, former treason accused Phillip Bynoe put it succinctly: “Linden is begging to get out of the trap of negative politics.  Region 10 is begging to get out of that trap of negative politics – politics where Lindeners are fed on a diet of distrust and hate, confusion and aggression…This diet of hate has to die.”
And all across the land this seems to be the truth that Guyanese are accepting, except for the hard-core hate-mongers.
I never thought that I would ever again witness a Guyanese leader being lionized as Dr. Cheddi Jagan always was – and a PPP leader to be so welcomed in such a bastion of the PNC as Linden speaks volumes for the emerging maturity of this nation, and the recognition that only by living the precepts enshrined in our national motto will we have a destiny that would guarantee that our developmental paradigm expands and accelerates.
But this trust did not come easy.  It began with the groundwork laid by the Father and Mother of this Nation, Dr. and Mrs. Jagan, who fought against oppressive forces and drastic odds to confer freedoms in this land and on this people – and who ensured that an army under a competent General would propel this legacy of unrelenting struggle against the shackles of racial conflict and negative politics that has chained the Guyanese nationhood to decades of retrogression in developmental imperatives that have continually stymied Guyana’s upward mobility and attainment of ultimate prosperity for all the peoples of this land.
As Irish-Catholic Patsy Downey has said – the Jagans could have done no better thing for Guyana than choosing Bharrat Jagdeo to continue their life’s work, and even the people in Linden recognized, as voiced by Bynoe and echoed by resounding voices in the mining town last Saturday, as it has done throughout the country and in the Guyanese Diaspora, that even upon demitting the Presidential office, Bharrat Jagdeo has to play a crucial role in the leadership of the land to continue the momentum of growth, where Guyana’s developmental graphs has a continuous skyward trajectory, global financial crisis regardless.
Dr. Jagan began wiping out the negative Jonestown image of Guyana in international enclaves with his unrelenting advocacy for a New Global Human Order that would reconstruct the social order and provide equity in the human race that inhabits what he terms this global village, and President Jagdeo has taken Guyana’s international stature to new heights through many fronts, not least his administration’s LCDS and his advocacy for a greener economy and plantation-type agriculture to expand food security in the world.
Despite repeated calls for him to run for a third term, President Jagdeo is adamant that he would not breach Guyana’s Constitution, which he has sworn to uphold; but it is popular opinion and a recurrent call that he should be retained within the leadership of the land, so as to sustain this developmental momentum he has set in train, and the PPP leadership should be wise enough to recognize and appreciate that this brilliant economist is needed in this country.
Dr. and Mrs. Jagan dedicated and lived their lives for this country.  Bharrat Jagdeo, in whom they reposed their absolute trust, should not abandon the ship midway on the journey to prosperity lest it be swamped by the vicissitudes of internal and external dynamics – extant and future, that could derail the continuum of growth in Guyana’s economy and the upward trajectory of development in the country.
That would be a betrayal of the slowly emerging trust and hope of the people of the land who are demonstrating that faith in tangible ways, as was evident by the tumultuous reception of the nation’s President and Cabinet in Linden on Saturday last.
Freedom of the mind is an intangible component of democracy.  Guyana is now truly a democracy – no longer enslaved by racial conflict and negative politics, and the people of Linden are leading the way.