Dear Editor,
Some of us may be well aware as to all that is currently happening in the political sphere, some of us may not be. Most of us however have lived the majority of our lives under the governance of the current political party and we can make certain assessments. For those of us who have gone through or are in the public school system, we know what we had to endure – teachers who weren’t qualified, a lack of or horrible furniture, little or no proper information technology facilities in this technological age, and the list goes on. Let’s not forget the number of after-school lessons we had to attend just to ensure that we were getting the necessary teaching that should have been available during the eight hours spent at school.
Then we attended the University of Guyana where we did not fare much better. The lack of furniture continued; there was a library that suffers from 20th century nostalgia; a lack of technological resources and a total disregard of Article 27 of the constitution which states that “Every citizen has the right to free education from nursery to university.” These are just a few of the issues that we had to involuntarily assent to in order to gain a certificate from a tertiary institution.
For those of us who have gone through the private school system, we may have fared a little better, but we cannot deny the sacrifices our parents had to make to ensure that we could attend these institutions.
Those of us who were not academically inclined and would have excelled in a technical and vocational educational institute found that those institutions were few and far between and those that existed only allowed for limited growth.
After graduation, whether at the high school or university level we are now tasked with making something of ourselves through employment. Here again we find ourselves at a stalemate. The number of available jobs is minuscule. Most of us have had to relegate ourselves to jobs far below our capabilities. Some of us are on our way out of the country to pursue greener pastures as the possibilities here are seemingly limited.
A few of us have been somewhat fortunate. We have been able to get a decent education, we may have been able to study at a university in the Caribbean or further afield thanks to a scholarship or parents who had the ability to afford it, and have been able to find the jobs that we have always dreamt of – but we still recognize the meagre nature of the possibilities.
As we become more aware of our surroundings we cannot help but recognize that someone must be responsible for cleaning the garbage off the streets, someone must be responsible for the lack of lights on the roadways, someone must be responsible for the horrible roads that we have to traverse, someone must be responsible for the lack of a proper education system, someone must be responsible for the lack of a proper healthcare system, someone must be responsible for the myriad of ailments that plague our society. As much as we may try to ignore the issues, at some point it just becomes so blatant that it is just too hard to ignore.
If we look deeper we may also recognize that there are two main fissures in our society: one based on race and one based on class. We may want to say that the racial fissure is the fault of the political parties as they may preach this once election time comes around and the nation becomes tense fearing the unknown, fearing the other. Whether or not it is the fault of the political parties we cannot deny that the fissure exists. The fissure of class is much easier to detect when we see the majority of Guyanese struggling to make ends meet and we find a minority driving Jaguars and building houses that four or five families can live in comfortably.
We keep hearing about corruption, about misappropriated funds, about the improprieties of ministers and we wonder when will we get back to dealing with actually developing a society that we can all be proud of. We keep hearing about the twenty-eight years of PNC rule and we wonder when will we get back to dealing with actually developing a society that we can all be proud of.
And now we are faced with a prorogued parliament. The President recognizing that a vote of no confidence by the parliament would then lead to new elections in three months has decided to suspend the National Assembly.
Where do we go from here? It is the belief of the Walter Rodney Youth Movement that this is the perfect time for the young people of this country to take a stand. To let those in power recognize that we are no longer going to allow Guyana to be controlled by persons who do not have the best interest of the country at heart. That we are not going to allow race and class to dictate the decisions that are being made for our country and that we as youth intend to have a vital input in how the Cooperative Republic of Guyana moves forward.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)
