Overcoming odds to chart a progressive future

OVER the decades the players and faces change, but the strategies for development in the nation never decelerate. The current Government has demonstrated its caring for the Guyanese people over and beyond any borders, with dynamic and transformational changes in the developmental landscape of the nation.  At the opening ceremony of the Ministry of Housing’s International Building Exposition in August of 2010, young Housing Minister Irfaan Alli had poignantly asked “…why do we always burden ourselves with negativity instead of celebrating what we have accomplished as a people?” Indeed, why?
The private sector has thrown its weight solidly behind the developmental initiatives of the Government, because they realise that only by taking a holistic approach will Guyana’s economy expand and the developmental processes continue its upward mobility, which will ultimately redound to the benefit of everyone in the country.  But this development has to continue its momentum, and this leads to the conjecture of whether the next President will have the capacity to sustain this trajectory of growth so ably piloted by Dr. Jagan and President Bharrat Jagdeo, along with other leaders in the PPP/C construct, because every ship needs a capable and committed pilot or it runs aground.  Our own history has taught us that, and we certainly do not want to return to the days when every aspect of life in this country had hit rock-bottom before this administration took hold of the wheel.
The caring of the PPP presidents has transcended the national borders into creating and charting policies that could benefit the world, because the PPP has always reached out a hand in friendship to countries all across the globe on the premise that the world is one global village with the inhabitants needing to look out for each other.
Dr. Cheddi Jagan had espoused this concept long ago and propagated the mechanism for this construct to be a global strategy for human development in his New Human Global Order, which has been adopted by the United Nations and is even now taking centre stage at various international fora.  This vision is our Dr. Cheddi Jagan’s gift to the world.
Each country is a microcosm of the wider world, with leadership portfolios in various spheres, and in a contextual way Guyana is representative of the struggle for survival and identity of every country in the world, even the great USA, the history of which is well documented as one of struggles and overcoming hurdles.  Oftentimes many atrocities are committed by leaders on their own peoples, causing much socio-economic dislocations and infrastructural devastation, and Guyanese still, to some extent, are affected by our past.
But slowly there has been an emergence of reconciliation and the knowledge that we are not enemies following divergent paths, because our goals are the same, and this is demonstrated every day as Guyanese from every community and every walk of life come to the realisation that opposing their personal development for the glorification, aggrandizement, and enrichment of pseudo-leaders cannot build a peaceful and prosperous country for their children to inherit.
They are also recognising that the PPP/C Government has their welfare at heart, because formerly impoverished families now, as the President remarked, have achieved dignity because they own things, especially their own homes, which gives them a stake in their own country and a sense of belonging and security that they never had before.
But then Guyana’s current leaders have demonstrated that they have an inherent love for their fellow man, a commitment to the general advancement of society, and an approach to a national developmental paradigm based on integrity and honesty, instead of egomania driving self-aggrandizement.
For instance, someone questioned the credentials of Dr. Frank Anthony; but Dr. Anthony had followed the great Dr. Cheddi Jagan and imbibed his ideals since before he was aged 10, as has many of the PPP leaders, even the young crop, including – and especially, his grandson, Cheddi Beret Jagan 11, Attorney-at-Law; as well as Guyana’s incumbent President who had been handpicked by the national patriarch and matriarch before they left this world.
But we have political leaders and aspiring leaders, and their acolytes and satellites, who use every opportunity to denigrate and derail the developmental processes of this nation, merely to advance their own selfish causes and agendas.
We are a developing country – emerging from a history of a plethora of destructive, elemental forces that devastated our nation, even to the point where even the more optimistic thought that we would never emerge from the quagmire in which we had been immersed for decades – to the point where even the more altruistic funding agencies had practically written us off as almost beyond redemption.
Until Jimmy Carter decided, in the interest of justice, and in light of  the contention of Guyana’s supreme leader, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, that the PPP had been “cheated, not defeated” for decades during general elections in Guyana, that the Carter Centre should use its phenomenal power to force the Hoyte administration, which is recorded to have been responsible for the worst election rigging in the history of Guyana during general elections of 1985, as well as the draconian Economic Recovery Programme (ERP – empty rice pots) that he had imposed on the Guyanese people, to concede to having relatively “free and fair” general elections in our country after decades of PNC rule.
Dr. Jagan was vindicated and the reconfigured PPP, with its civic component, undertook the gargantuan task of trying to restore some order out of the critical and chaotic national landscape then prevailing – in every area.
One of the more pressing needs was to reduce the crippling debt burden – $2.1 billion, which was stymieing rehabilitation and developmental works.
Dr. Jagan and his brilliant and trusted young acolyte, junior Finance Minister, Bharat Jagdeo, went into overdrive, lobbying at every conceivable forum for a reduction and/or write-off of the albatross of Guyana’s debt.  The international world responded favourably over the years and this, coupled with prudent fiscal management, has enabled Guyana to stabilize its economy, and even allowed some degree of growth, in less than two decades, to the extent where, in a recessional global environment where even the most developed nations are collapsing, Guyana has managed to maintain stability and sustain its macro-economic achievements.
The importance of this to the national economic health and the development of Guyana’s macro-economic fundamentals is being attested to by some big leaguers in the entrepreneurial fraternity, most of whom are not traditional PPP supporters, but who are honest enough to publicly recognize and appreciate the Government’s policies and strategies, and its willingness to productively engage in interactive programmes that can facilitate the development of the private sector’s initiatives, especially when these initiatives are adjunctive to Government’s developmental imperatives.
When the incumbent President relinquishes the highest office in the land, with a legacy of phenomenal leadership,to President-elect Donald Ramotar in December of this year, in his own words, he will be leaving the peoples of this nation in hands that will continue to carve a path to prosperity and unity, in the tradition of the PPP, so that every Guyanese would be afforded a brighter future in this land that belongs to all of us.

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