Shaun Michael Samaroo

Cussing out one another when we disagree on an issue cannot generate solutions to our problems.

We launch this new year, well into the second decade of the 21st century, with tremendous challenges facing us.

Guyanese around the world engage on social media with dynamic energy, sharing our views, ideas and opinions about the state of our homeland.

Mention the names of our parliamentary political parties, anywhere in this country, and watch how citizens react.

We talk so easily of the dichotomy between developed and developing societies, without staring stark reality in the face, without confronting the differences, without active challenging of our abstract acceptance of our condition.

Our nation faces crucial, crushing problems, and the only way out demands that citizens of good conscience and sound mind work at designing solutions.

Jay Jordan, born and bred in Canada, embodies a Guyanese story that we could easily lose.

For decades, great and noble Guyanese souls fought for democracy to become our solid foundation, believing it would lead to us realizing our true potential as a nation.

Blaming others for our faults and shortcomings seems to be a favourite pastime in this country.

In the face of stunning failures at State level to transform our nation, we must applaud the few citizens who envision and lead private initiatives to make a defining difference for Guyanese.

To self-develop, a person must exercise that crucial essential life-skill of critical thinking.

Citizens concerned about this society want urgent action to rid our communities of crime.

In our quest to create the kind of future we aspire to, we must cultivate the ability to know the root cause of why we are where we are today.

Questions of corruption dog this Government with determined persistence. The list of State projects and shadowy dealings over which huge question marks hang runs long, and problematic.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Facing critical challenges in the Guyanese homeland, like our shortage of skills and lack of a world class human resource capital pool, we need to exercise creative thinking to find solutions.

Our society faces these three crucial, persistent problems as 2013 enters its last quarter.

Out of 27,500 school children who wrote CXC, in the last two years, 16,100 failed to pass English Language, the mother tongue, and only language, of the Guyanese nation.

Walking through the Georgetown Public Hospital becomes an experience of profound despair.

Young people across this land tackle their personal development with great faith that they could build a solid future.