Dear Editor,
Fifty years young can be a good feeling. It has all the freshness, excitement and awe of the first fifty minutes of a new existence. On the other hand, fifty years old can represent for some the exhaustion of fifty demanding lifetimes endured. Which of these has it been for Guyanese?
Enough has been written about the positives and the negatives, the real and the imagined. Enough! No more regrets about what should have been. Today, on this fiftieth birthday, cannot be about the slavery of the past; it must be about the freedom promised through what can be; of how things are hoped to be at age sixty, seventy, and then a hundred. Take away that flickering hope ‒ however faint ‒ and the day is over. There will be no dreams left, no visions to embrace, only the unfathomable mysteries of the daunting would remain.
I will settle for hope. It is what has brought us this far and to this time and place. Though trust is lower and slower, it can rise and overcome the haze of fifty years lost, the loss of confidence, the imbalance of failure, and the primacy of lesser virtues. A few defining actions can make a world of difference, but only if there is an acceleration of the unselfish, a grand manifestation of love for this land, and an even greater care for its people. Kipling wrote (made famous by Stanley Baldwin) that power without responsibility has been the prerogative of the harlot through the ages. It is time now for Guyanese from all walks to demand responsibility of the highest order from the power so freely conferred on its leaders; the responsibility to perform prudently and to deliver what is clean and wholesome for this nation.
The ostensibly majestic and grandiose have not served well. In this the first hour of the fifty-first year, perhaps it is time for the simple, the straight and the humble; the sublime should follow. There is this story of a Dean of Harvard Medical School who used to tell new students that half of what was taught would prove to be wrong in times to come. The problem was he did not know which half it was. The lesson for citizens is that all must be willing to recognize what is injurious, what will fail the test of time, and what must occur to bring about desired progress.
From this 51st year forward, Guyanese must challenge themselves to learn from the last decades, and be willing to commit to something different. It must be to challenge ossified mentalities, to protest in anguish, agony, and anger, as the case may be. Sometimes, it is simply to weep for this love that betrays and jilts so effortlessly, so unthinkingly. There has been more than enough of what has been consigned and confined to the undertow of the wave, when this country ought to have been riding the triumphant crests.
For half of this population, the next fifty years could be outside the cards, beyond the pale and on the other side of the last rivers to cross. For the significant remnant, tomorrow is today. What then? How now?
As in life, this marriage of hearth and land and the indefinable navigates around turbulences, anxieties, and acrimonies. This one has chronic suspicion and acute resentments. The search for smooth pathways towards that gleam of potential must continue, and can be if only honesty and integrity assumed their proper ascendant places. It begins with conscientious citizens, it extends to those who rule, and aspire to lead. Honesty and integrity can make this place go where it has never been before. It is time.
Guyanese yearn for such a long awaited day, such a time under the sun, such a gathering of the rightness delayed and overdue. In this 51st year, I so dream…. Yes, there is still that freedom. It is real. It is what empowers. Here is a quiet prayer: Many different returns, Guyana!
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
