THERE is a saying that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Thankfully as a nation, we have learnt immensely from our past.

Our past had always been instructive and a guide to our forward march. We have just celebrated Emancipation Day in which we paid homage and respect to our African foreparents and the rich legacy they bequeathed us- a legacy of struggle and sacrifice and a determination to succeed despite the odds.

I think our ancestors, were they alive today, would have been pleased with the progress we have made over the decades. To begin with, we have what many multi-ethnic societies are still finding difficult to achieve, and that is a cohesive society. We have achieved what it took some countries centuries to achieve. We are not only culturally diverse, but we are also culturally rich. Put in another way, our richness lies in our diversity.

I have always held the view that Guyana is not an ethnically polarised society, as some people are trying to make it to be. This is far from it. We work and we play together. Our children go to the same schools and we worship in the same churches. We shop at the same markets and supermarkets and, like all rational people, we shop where the prices are most competitive regardless of the skin colour or religion of the vendor.

I have had, at a personal level, so many experiences of kindness rendered to me by Afro-Guyanese friends and colleagues far too numerous to recount. I know that my experiences are not unique to me.

This is why we have to learn to work together for our common good. This is exactly what our foreparents would want from us. We have had our challenges but we persevered and we achieved.

Life, it has to be said, is all about coping with challenges. We have had our fair share of challenges. We have been victims of divide and rule tactics by our colonial masters. The nationalist spirit of the early 1950s was shattered by the split of the PPP in 1955, when Forbes Burnham unsuccessfully sought to take over the leadership of the PPP from Dr. Cheddi Jagan. But he left a scar in our body politic from which we are still to fully recover. Our politics have never been the same since that fateful day.

Incidentally, this month, August 5, will be 29 years since the passing of Burnham. One can be charitable to him and say that he played a not insignificant role in the politics of Guyana. He was a founder member of the PPP in the early 1950s and served briefly as Party Chairman. He served in the short-lived PPP Council of Ministers following the massive PPP victory in the 1953 election. But he allowed his ego to get the better of him, and in the process, he sacrificed the greater good on the altar of political opportunism.

Whatever good he did for Guyana was negated by the harm that befell this nation as a result of his lust for power. The nationalist movement had been shattered as mentioned earlier with the split of the PPP in 1955; the democratic fabric of the state had been ruptured through rigged elections from 1968 all the way to 1985. A climate of fear and repression stalked the land as the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry is now bringing back to the national consciousness; the economy took a severe battering for the greater part of his rule, and the country was reduced to a pariah state. The country was declared bankrupt and uncreditworthy by the IMF and other international financial institutions. The education and health systems for all practical purposes were broken and life for the average Guyanese was miserable and poor.

I can go on, but I think the point has been made. Guyana today is a much better place to live in than it was during the dark days of PNC rule, and no amount of white-washing by apologists for the PNC can erase that fact.

Today, as in the 1960s, some dark clouds are casting an ominous shadow over this dear land of ours. But we can all draw strength from the maturity, wisdom and resilience of the Guyanese people to stand firm, and in a spirit of togetherness, to thwart any attempt to reverse the clock of history

(By Hydar Ally)