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On this ‘Mothers’ Day’, when Guyana joins other nations of the world in placing a special focus on what’s so vital for any family structure – Motherhood — we wish to make a special appeal for reflections on how best our country can honour mothers and, by extension, build stronger and more caring families across this land.
Parties and politicians obsessed with passions for stirring and sustaining social and political divisions should pause and reflect on the severely negative impact of the current wave of criminality on family life in Guyana, which became an independent nation 47 years ago this month.
The frequency of mind-boggling cases of gun-related murders, multiple rapes, and sheer butchering of men, women and children, as reported by the media, that are further taxing the capacity of the security forces to bring the criminal rampage under control, combine to have an awful toll on family life.
This grim situation demands a new political culture, one that puts PEOPLE’S wellbeing above ANY party or its collective “leadership” that seems more preoccupied with narrow considerations of either ethnicity or ideological persuasion, than how to help spawn better family units for the emergence of better villages and communities that could eventually achieve development of a better nation.
This is not a glassy-eyed call; we are conscious of the enormous challenges involved, in addition to the cynics and doubters who prefer to cling to their doomsday perspectives, instead, that is, of showing some respect for the capacity of both influential and ordinary Guyanese to give a fighting chance to the social stirrings abroad in this land for “change” in the orientation and approaches to build better families for a better nation.
It’s a collective response that would require serious re-thinking on the part of our education, religious and cultural institutions and organizations, and driven by a commitment to make a lived reality of our national motto: “One People, One Nation, One Destiny”.
Sensitised to such a perspective, it means that irrespective of race, colour, religion or social status, people across villages, communities and towns in this land—not forgetting our capital, Georgetown—could come to develop a better appreciation for the need to stand together, as a united force, to expose and beat back the epidemic of criminality haunting this nation.
Not just the notorious criminal dealers in illegal drugs and guns, but the armed killers and rapists as well would come to get the message of the new united force they have to confront in villages and communities across Guyana.
So too, we feel, would the corrupt police and soldiers in our security forces among whose ranks, sadly, are also rapists, thieves, and… Yes! Killers, as media reports are increasingly revealing.
Let us, therefore, observe this year’s “Mothers Day” with a quiet resolve to do our individual part, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, religious and/or cultural persuasion, to help build better family units that respect and honour motherhood as a most valuable building-block for changing the political culture of this “Our native land”.
Parties and politicians obsessed with passions for stirring and sustaining social and political divisions should pause and reflect on the severely negative impact of the current wave of criminality on family life in Guyana, which became an independent nation 47 years ago this month.
The frequency of mind-boggling cases of gun-related murders, multiple rapes, and sheer butchering of men, women and children, as reported by the media, that are further taxing the capacity of the security forces to bring the criminal rampage under control, combine to have an awful toll on family life.
This grim situation demands a new political culture, one that puts PEOPLE’S wellbeing above ANY party or its collective “leadership” that seems more preoccupied with narrow considerations of either ethnicity or ideological persuasion, than how to help spawn better family units for the emergence of better villages and communities that could eventually achieve development of a better nation.
This is not a glassy-eyed call; we are conscious of the enormous challenges involved, in addition to the cynics and doubters who prefer to cling to their doomsday perspectives, instead, that is, of showing some respect for the capacity of both influential and ordinary Guyanese to give a fighting chance to the social stirrings abroad in this land for “change” in the orientation and approaches to build better families for a better nation.
It’s a collective response that would require serious re-thinking on the part of our education, religious and cultural institutions and organizations, and driven by a commitment to make a lived reality of our national motto: “One People, One Nation, One Destiny”.
Sensitised to such a perspective, it means that irrespective of race, colour, religion or social status, people across villages, communities and towns in this land—not forgetting our capital, Georgetown—could come to develop a better appreciation for the need to stand together, as a united force, to expose and beat back the epidemic of criminality haunting this nation.
Not just the notorious criminal dealers in illegal drugs and guns, but the armed killers and rapists as well would come to get the message of the new united force they have to confront in villages and communities across Guyana.
So too, we feel, would the corrupt police and soldiers in our security forces among whose ranks, sadly, are also rapists, thieves, and… Yes! Killers, as media reports are increasingly revealing.
Let us, therefore, observe this year’s “Mothers Day” with a quiet resolve to do our individual part, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, religious and/or cultural persuasion, to help build better family units that respect and honour motherhood as a most valuable building-block for changing the political culture of this “Our native land”.
