Over drinks and being boisterous as is customary when we are in the throes of what we tell ourselves are fundamental political quarrels, a few well-educated friends and I began contemplating the current persistent suggestion that our current political problems are largely the result of the absence of leadership in the ruling generation and a corollary that our salvation lies with our young people taking government. I promised to publicly recall the more important of our conclusions.
Maybe because of our average age of about sixty years, apart from the obvious context that the current generation will definitely be replaced by the coming ones, we quickly pounce upon and dismiss the notion that the nation’s salvation lies with its youth. We concluded that if anything, this position is indicative of the political hopelessness in which we have found ourselves. As Karl Marx argued in relation to religion, it is no more than a cry for hope in hopeless conditions.
Cheddi Jagan was 29 years old when he entered the Legislative Assembly and was only 33 years of age which he became the