FROM our corner of the earth we prosper, a people chosen to be together out of far-flung ancient lands in that wide swath of Europe, Africa, India, China, now spread across the Caribbean, North America, the world, a global diaspora, our homeland sandwiched on this thin coastal strip between the vast swelling murky depths of the roaring Atlantic Ocean lapping at those sturdy Dutch stonewalls guarding our shores, and the live, verdant, mysterious sweep of our paradisiac forests, so raw in virgin ecosystem, our days blessed with fertility, kitchen gardens flourishing at our doorsteps, our land of many waters absolutely free of natural disasters and ethnic strife and social unrest and gross poverty, here we, the Guyanese people, dwell in peace, progress, prosperity.
This is our story on the world stage.
With that great swelling of the heart, aware of this astonishing beauty of who we are as a nation, knowing that our land decorates the earth in lush nature with a peaceful people and a democratic body politic and a leaping socio-economic abundance, as we progress from gross poverty a quarter century ago to today being a middle-income developing nation, we rise, unique on the world stage, South America’s only English-speaking nation, the Caribbean’s only mainland nation, we the Guyanese people walking tall, again, on the world stage.
We once dwelt among the exalted peoples of this part of the earth, back in the early 1960’s, when we rose to the top of the Caribbean. Then we collapsed in a spectacular downward spiral as we plunged from our noble heights to become the second poorest country, behind Haiti, in the Western Hemisphere by 1990. We suffered two and a half decades of incredible socio-economic collapse, our experiment and subjective interpretation of the concepts of democracy and development causing us our place in the world.
In the two and a half decades, from 1992 to today, we’ve repaired the broken walls and reconstructed the damaged systems and realigned our structural foundation, enjoying again our exalted place in the world, again at the top of the Caribbean, in education achievement, pace of socio-economic development, and macro-economic performance.
Next Monday we face the real choice of where we go from here.
With hundreds of thousands of new homes re-making our landscape and re-designing our social space over the past two decades, with 1,000 plus school buildings now spanking new and brightly painted, with heart surgeries for kids a reality in our public healthcare system, oh we’ve come a far way.
We’re set to achieve the Guyana Dream, that ancient El Dorado vision of who we could be as a nation, our people hugging this fertile belt of land straddling the wild Atlantic coast and skirting the virgin aliveness of our grand forests.
We’re set to dream big again.
So it is with President Donald Ramotar’s clarity of vision to see the Amaila hydroelectric project a done deal, a reality humming across our land. So it is in our President’s courage and social conscience and sense of natural justice in the Presidential convening of the Rodney Commission to right our most tragic political wrong, in cleansing this awful stain from our history. So it is with President Ramotar’s visions, plans, projects and programmes as we move forward from here. So it is with Guyana becoming a glowing beauty on the world stage, a nation awakening to our great potential, conscious that we could indeed be a great people, dreaming the dream of our 21st century potential.
President Ramotar walks among us, so humble, so engaging, so becoming the father-figure we aspire to at this time of our coming into being as a 21st century society. He serves with growing confidence as our servant-leader, wanting nothing but to do his best, to serve with all his heart and soul, to be President in this hour of our nation’s evolution, not for personal aggrandisement, but as a duty to serve his people, chosen of fate for such a time as this.
This son of the soil, listed in the column of Mixed Race Guyanese, that unique sixth race of our peoples, born in the obscure little logging and farming community of Karia Karia aback of the Essequibo, rose to become our Head-of-State.
Squaring off in a political contest against the might of an accomplished military commander in Brigadier David Granger, a man of imposing intellectual and military accomplishment, a historian and media entrepreneur, facing this giant army man, President Ramotar stands out for his depth of character and leadership wisdom and his immense love for the Guyanese nation.
In him and Prime Ministerial candidate Elisabeth Harper, our nation looks forward to the next five years, this humble son of the soil and this career diplomat teaming up to take us to our new place in the world.
If our natural landscape shapes our character as a people, if the vast wideness of the wild Ocean that we wake up to every morning, this untamable constant roar of nature stretching out to the horizon, if this makes our worldview, if the mysterious music of the immense jungle of our sweeping forests molds our vision, then our natural environment makes us a unique people, with a distinct destiny.
That destiny now lies in the hands of President Ramotar, a man of the land, this Karia Karia village boy who grew up to cross massive rivers and traverse counties and conquer our history of colonialism and dictatorship and to rise to lead our most enduring, historic political movement and to become Head-of-State of the Guyanese nation, this humble soul showing the strength, stamina and depth of character and inner courage to face off against political foes who underestimate who we are as a people, culled together from far-flung lands to come together, dwelling in this blessed pastoral beauty of a land.