I HAD a dream recently.

Like most dreams, I had only a vague sense of where I was, and the time the dream was taking place.

I knew that I was in Guyana, and that it was sometime in the future, but I’m not sure exactly how far in the future it was.
This future Guyana wasn’t a Utopia. People still had problems. There was still some crime, as there is bound to be in most societies; there was still some amount of poverty. Yet this future place in my dream was a beautiful place to be in.
It was a place where political parties still existed, but where the dialogue between them was without any sort of acrimony or vindictiveness, or ad hominem attacks. The debate in Parliament focused on timely, pertinent issues, and when consensus came, it was based on sound, objective judgment and moral fortitude.
On issues of national interest, even the partisanship that is expected in the average democracy faded away, and short-term political gains were sacrificed on the altar of the greater good, as opposed to the other way around. There was, in that Guyana of the future, the delicate but strongly held balance of informed, critical dissent and true national unity.
In this future, society was a place in which people treated each other well. It was a place in which consideration and respect for the elderly weren’t just part of our collective attitude, but something that was built into virtually every institution and agency with which that senior citizens had to interact. It was a society in which men cherished and protected the women in their lives, and the papers went for months without carrying a story of a man being charged with so much as verbally abusing a woman, a society where the combined voice of every civil society organisation, no matter their main mandate, finally put the monster of domestic violence to rest.
In this future Guyana, even the poorest child had access to a sound, quality education, from nursery to university. The tools and opportunities that are available now to young people in the developed world were available to all young people here; the infinite world of knowledge that is the Internet was accessible to each and every child. The youth of this place went into the world of adulthood, confident that the world they inhabited was one constructed for them, and one they were equipped to build further upon, for their sake as well as the sake of their own children.
This Guyana of the future, the Guyana in my dream, existed in a world in which fairness and balance prevailed over special interests. It was a world in which the global leadership arose, not out of the bankrupt concept that ‘Might equals right’, but from the understanding that no nation, no matter how strong, should be above the laws mutually agreed upon and established by all. It was a world in which the strong understood that with their power came with an inherent trust of responsibility, and that every breach of that trust they committed would be a sign to the worst among us that justice is corruptible and malleable.
On awakening, on coming back to the reality of present-day, I realised that the world we live in is both at the cusp of reaching that world I dreamt of, as well as far away from it. For example, the politics of the future can be extrapolated from the politics of today, and while there have been signs of recent that the general tone of political debate can change from the usual vitriol, these signs have been few and far between.
When it comes to the development of our people, our youth in particular, our programmes are innovative, well thought out, and well intended. From the ‘One Laptop Per Family Project’ to enhanced sports facilities, to the hydropower project coming onstream, to the pending access of our oil resources, the future of our young people seem to be bright. But the execution will come to less if consensus on the way forward is not reached; if key stakeholders insist on stalling the process, often not for partisan gains, but just to score partisan damage.
We are still very far away from anywhere close to an acceptable situation with regard to domestic violence, with too many of our women being beaten and maimed and murdered on a daily basis. Yet strong and concrete steps have been taken for us to begin to tackle this scourge as a society, and I am confident that we can beat it.
On the world stage, the future looks uncertain and bleak in terms of the establishment of a truly democratic global community that has been the dream of so many since the League of Nations was established almost 100 years ago. Ironically, and perhaps prophetically, the very things that plagued that failed organisation – bullying from stronger nations and compromise from weaker ones – are those that are plaguing the international system now.
We all have dreams, sometimes about things that we have no control over, it’s true, but mostly things that human agency is the key factor in bringing to a reality. A better future is ahead of us, once we are willing to make it so.

In closing I wish to refer to a recent discussion that I had with a Government minister who stated very clear and infinitively that the Government does not embrace any kind of public private partnership. This was surprising since on several occasions both the President and other ministers embraced this concept in the context of economic development. As a result of this I do intend to run from next week a series of articles that I previously done on public/private partnership.

(By Keith Burrowes)