By Moses MOSES V. NAGAMOOTOO
Prime Minister of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana
(Speech at the Annual Graduation ceremony of President’s College 2018.11.01)

I LISTENED carefully to the report from Mrs. Carlyn Canterbury, Principal of President’s College, and noted the stupendous results of 100 per cent, 99 per cent and 98 per cent passes. Then she mentioned as one of the challenges facing the college is the invasion from stray cattle. It made me think that this college must have some unique intellectual grass that is responsible not only for the high pass rate but for attracting even cattle! And I ask, noting that the surname of the deputy principal is “Success”, why shouldn’t the cows try to milk or even feed on your outstanding academic performance!

Today is a day of achievements. Today is a day of glory for students, teachers and parents. I share the elevation of your soul in pride and, I congratulate all graduands of President’s College.
I am honoured to bring you greetings from His Excellency, President David Arthur Granger, who unfortunately cannot be here today with you, as he has left the country for Cuba to undergo medical attention.

But I would repeat and share the advice that His Excellency has given to a previous graduating class of 2016, in his own words: “I congratulate all of the graduates. I wish you all success in life. I urge you to embrace the value of an education and the values of education, especially the values of excellence which this school embodies.”

On that occasion, His Excellency, himself a brilliant academician and historian, in addition to being an accomplished and distinguished military leader, outlined the history of President’s College. Opened in September 1985, the College was set up to be “a school of excellence”. The President’s College Act of 1990 explains that: “The aims of the College are to provide a place of education, learning and research of a standard required and expected of a secondary school of the highest standard and to promote the advancement of knowledge and the diffusion and extension of art, science and technology.”

Today, as in the past, President’s College has produced students of the highest standard, who have achieved academic excellence. Today, you are proceeding to institutions of higher learning, to universities, technical and vocational schools. Some of you perhaps may enter the world of work.

Whatever you do, remember the groundings you have had here at President’s College, even the social life and interaction, and to go forward to achieve distinction. The great American Civil Rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, once advised students that the most important thing to do after graduation is to keep on moving. If you have to walk, run, fly, creep or even crawl, keep going forward.
In Guyana, one of our patriotic songs exhorts us to move upwards. What does the song say?

“Onward, upward, may we ever go
Day by day in strength and beauty grow
Till at length we
Each of us
May show
What Guyana’s sons and daughters
Can be.”

President Granger also advised that students must be educated in human values, which include Duty, to parents and society; Discipline to achieve set goals, and integrity to command the respect of others.
It does not matter from what level of our society you came, aim to transcend barriers. I came from a rural, small, fishing village on the Corentyne. I started school barefooted. President Granger also briefly attended that school as a boy.

I saved pennies from selling fish with my mother for my first term’s fees at high school. Those were difficult times, but at 17 I became a junior teacher and moved up to run a private high school for children from poor homes. I became a journalist and, when I turned 55, I became an attorney-at-law.

I became a lawyer later in my life because I remembered the ambition that my father had set for me. Our parents have dreams, and we have a duty to become what they could not, because they did not have the better conditions that we enjoy today. But we could also transcend our social origins by going forward with determination. It must mean something to you and to this generation that the President of our country and the Prime Minister once attended the same school in a poor, tiny, rural village! The wife of the Prime Minister also attended that school.

I share those snippets from my life because I want you to feel confident that you too can make it, through difficulties and challenges. You too can navigate your career through murky waters of temptations, to claim your space, and to avoid taking the easy route, or to drop out; or succumb to the diseases of drug use, alcoholism or crime. Today, the world is changing and changing fast. We have entered the technological and digital age. You have to adapt, move with the drift, and not be left behind.

New opportunities, not contemplated by older generations, await you. I have had a peek at the draft of Guyana’s Green State Development Strategy (GSDS), and I saw glimpses of the vision for the next 20 years. With Guyana becoming the new frontier for oil and gas wealth, there would be more than adequate resources to build new infrastructures, more highways and by-ways, more ports and even railways. Life would be transformed exponentially. You would become the petroleum engineers, the environmentalists, the scientists and technicians to guide the transformation that would make Guyana, not a mendicant, but a symbol of pride and respect in the world.

I advise you to stay focused, set high goals, and work purposefully to achieve them. I would like to associate my wife, Mrs Sita Nagamootoo, with this hope. As you know, in front of every good politician is a successful woman; who, as an educationist, a former school headmistress and teacher’s college lecturer, always tells young people “to know their purpose in life”. As you graduate today from college, go forward with confidence to achieve your purpose in life!