Dear Editor,
WHILE we celebrate Emancipation Day, should we not also celebrate the PPP/C’s leadership for taking us closer to economic and psychological emancipation?
Where do I begin to tell the story of how great a political party can be? Do I begin with the massive physical transformation happening in this country right in front of our eyes, or do I begin with the epic struggle to preserve our democratic system in the 2020 elections?
Should I start with when the PPP carried the sugar workers, the bauxite workers, the clerical and commercial workers, the rice farmers and all the small people on their backs, giving them voice, hope and meaning?
Or wait, maybe I should start with the amazing progress the People’s Progressive Party/Civic has made in improving the relations between the two major races in our country, an area that for 60 years has kept us back.
And what about the inclusion of young people in the political life of this country, of women in the national life of this country? Where should I begin to tell the story of how great a party, the People’s Progressive Party, can be?
But I must pause here and correct myself, because the People’s Progressive Party/Civic is no longer a political party. It is an emancipatory social movement with a big M.
And what is the difference between a political party and a Social Movement? A political party is an institution or an organisation that sets out to do only one thing — win power.
But today, unlike all other political parties in Guyana, the PPP has gone way beyond that narrow political ambition. Today, the PPP/C has evolved into an emancipatory social movement because it has gathered the energies, the hopes, the aspirations, the dreams of all the people of this country, from across all divides, and is channelling those energies into a programme for the economic and social emancipation for all Guyanese.
It is a social movement because it has brought together people who have been on the fringes of Guyanese politics and society for so long. It has mobilised the hopes of our indigenous peoples, women, the poor, the rich, the unlearned and the learned, the urban and the rural, the coastal and the hinterland, into a truly national movement.
It is, indeed, a movement of the people. And a movement BY the people.

For so long in our political life in Guyana, The people did not exist. Races existed; this bastard principle of collective identity had divided our Guyanese brethren into different and even conflicting camps. In front of our eyes, in the massive numbers at Leonora, Kitty, Bartica, Albion, Anna Regina, Rose Hall etc., we see this ethnic divide dissolving into inclusivity and diversity.
Today, the PPP is transcending this racial divide, bringing our peoples into a truly national movement, emancipating the Guyanese people from our narrow ethnic and political identities into citizens, forging feelings of belonging and identification with the nation.
Under the leadership of the PPP/C and the inspirational leadership of President, Dr Irfaan Ali, Guyanese from all walks of life and all regions now long to be part of the whole of Guyana, not just their local communities.
And in this longing to be part of the whole of Guyana, they see and feel themselves as a people among all the other peoples of Guyana, whatever their race, region, gender, religion, class and so on.
In short, the PPP/C has inspired a new civic consciousness, a kind of feeling and attitude in which Guyana has become our reference, not just our local ethnic and regional communities, as has been the case for most of us even before our independence. Today, we are rapidly being emancipated from our narrow racial and ethnic identities.
And how have the PPP been able to achieve this monumental task? What have they done to bring this national civic consciousness into reality?
They have built hundreds upon hundreds of bridges, they have ensured that people own land; they have made home ownership possible through loans at low interest rates; they have built hospitals in one community after another, so people do not have to travel to the capital city for first-class medical care as has been the case for so long in Guyana.
They have built schools, they have improved schools and they have improved the pedagogy, the methods of teaching and learning. They have improved the curriculum, the content of what people learn, they have improved the lives of teachers by increasing their salaries; they have improved the lives of students and parents by removing and reimbursing all fees from primary school all the way to university; they have introduced new technologies for teaching and learning, and so much more in education.
I started with bridges, but I should add roads. Bridges and roads connect people. Bridges and roads make it possible for people to move far beyond their local ethnic village communities to mix and mingle, to experience other Guyanese ways of being and to realise that we are all part of this dear land of ours, a land which we have collectively built with our pain, suffering and hopes.

Bridges and roads are not simply physical infrastructures. They are routes to places different from where we were born, where we grew up, and without the massive work of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic, where we would have died.
These bridges and roads that the PPP has been building allow Guyanese to not only travel from one place to another but from one community to another. These bridges and roads allow us to see how others live; to eat the foods of people outside of our communities, speak the way they speak, dance the way they dance; enjoy the music they enjoy and even dream the dreams they dream for the children and children’s children. The bridges and roads built by this government have allowed a new civic consciousness to emerge in our land.
Yes, this PPP government may not have achieved all they truly wanted to achieve, but we must thank them for their five years of work in fashioning a truly national movement by and for the People of Guyana. And when we think of how monumental this achievement is, should we not give them the chance to continue nurturing the civic consciousness and identity called One Guyana?

Yours truly,
Dr Walter H Persaud