Dear Editor,
A new year comes. People have their resolutions; I have questions. There are some recommendations, too.
The questions first: Is President David Granger ready to lead this nation, and drag it along with him, down a fundamentally different road? Is he prepared to commit the power of his office, the prestige of his own standing to guide towards that eternal human quest for the next level? Is he ready to take us all beyond the existing racial and political horizons that menace and roil?
This can be his year of departure, of singular national imprint, and of elevating from the impenetable sticky morass to the cohesion that is so elusive. The environment and procurement and local government and pie-sharing may all register impressive successes. But the more transformational issue has to be a new way, an enlightened political and social existence, if this land is to progress, if not survive intact.
The leader must haul Guyanese, kicking and screaming, towards social cohesion. Citizens have to decide if it is a false god, or an imagined Guyanese one. But they must decide, and along with that, how much it is desired. The President must be willing to advance, take the lead, and establish the perimeters of the dialogue, and the trajectory as well as velocity of the thrust. Anything less would be tantamount to an admission of retreat, and perhaps a continuance towards a divided and doomed future. Let this matter be faced front and centre –the state cannot continue in its present state.
Thus 2016 can be a breakthrough year for the President and his group on this most compelling of national concerns, which ought to be given the highest priority, become the first order of things. If not, all are consigned, if not condemned, to the ugliness of the past, and all that that represents.
May it be different this year. May the new president be the man to take the bull by the horns and charge forward. He must be ready to break away towards breakthrough; to be exceptional; and to be dogged.
It does matter if other political leaders do otherwise, and hold on to their bread and butter. I hope. I entreat. I must be.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
