AS we mark the 29th anniversary of the passing of our late President Linden Forbes Burnham, even his strongest critics cannot deny that he sought to make us as a people self-reliant, and to ensure that our natural resources were exploited primarily for the benefit of all Guyanese.We seem not to be on course. For example: As we witness the many truckloads of logs being exported daily by aliens. We need, as we remember Linden Forbes Burnham, to wonder what has become of his policy of promoting the ideas of secondary industries and the concept of value added being a non-negotiable in so far as the extraction of our non-renewable resources are concerned. No one should be allowed to violate so easily this principle, what we now see is the plunder of our country.

At this time we can reflect on Burnham, his vision, and muse on the words of the Prophet Kalil Gibran – Forbes Burnham oft times had us repeat some of them.
“Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave and eats bread it does not harvest.”
“Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dreams, yet submits in its awakening.”
Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boats not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.”
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.”
“Pity the nation dividing into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.”
Have we lost our way to real nation building?

HAMILTON GREEN
Mayor of the City of Georgetown