THE Central Corentyne Chamber of Commerce would like to offer its congratulations and best wishes to Mr. Donald Ramotar on being elected to office as the seventh Executive President of Guyana. Being President of Guyana, especially in this unique phase of our history where the government is the minority in Parliament, would certainly be a gargantuan task and we wish the President ‘all the best’, and urge him to bring his own individuality to this most important task in the land.

At the same time, it would require all elected Parliamentarians to put aside personal grandeur, malice and pettiness and work assiduously only towards the benefit of their respected constituencies. In short, they need to put the country first. Our Chamber is ready to play its part in the development of Region 6 and our country as a whole.

In our view, the elections generally were very well conducted and we express our thanks and appreciation to the Chairman and the entire staff of the Guyana Elections Commission for having to perform this unenviable task. Thanks also to the police and all other security forces for the tremendous job they did during the campaign and the elections period.

In closing, we would like to call on all Guyanese to accept the results of the poll, which we feel was free and fair. We also call on the Opposition to take this exceptional opportunity of their majority in Parliament to immediately begin working with the Government to represent and bring benefits to their supporters.

This has to be done in Parliament, and not on the streets. We have already lost one vital week of business and production and productivity. We are hoping this coming week will see all businesses returning to normalcy.