In 1970, we were a very poor but proud nation with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of only about US$300 per capita. By 1990, we were a least developing country and one of the worst indebted nations on Earth with a poverty rate between 66 and 88 per cent.
Our education and health systems became the worst in the Caribbean. Life expectancy at birth was no better in 1990 than it was in 1964. We were a dictatorship with rigged elections. Citizens were afraid to speak and there was no freedom in the land. We had two newspapers and one radio station.
By 1990, we were the Caribbean’s laughing stock, gone from the “bread basket” to the “basket case” of the Caribbean. Yet, even then we could have celebrated our roles in establishing the Caribbean Community (Caricom); the Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta); and Iwokrama, our gift to the world. Guyana was still our country.
In 2014, on our 44th republic anniversary, we are a middle-income country, with a GDP of about US$3800 per capita, more than 10 times what it was in 1970. We have reduced our debt and we are among the better countries in the world for debt management. Our children more often than not top the Caribbean in regional examinations and we can do medical interventions such as dialysis, open heart and brain surgeries and kidney transplants.
Success story
We are a democracy and our people are protected by human rights commissions. Our indigenous people, by law and practice, have a right to their lands and a voice in our country. We have at least six functioning radio stations, four daily newspapers, about 30 television stations, and innumerable Internet media networks. Thousands of our people own their own businesses and hundreds of thousands of people live in their own homes.
Our nation is building a compendium of success stories, as a country, as communities, and as individuals. Surely we can celebrate these successes without rancour and without prejudice. There must be times when we can put aside partisanship and sectionalism to celebrate genuine Guyanese success stories.
We can celebrate that Guyana had the foresight and is in the forefront of trying to do something about climate change. Dr Cheddi Jagan spoke eloquently of environmental degradation, former President Bharrat Jagdeo is a global champion and a tireless crusader, President Donald Ramotar has written about global warming since 1989, and Navin Chandarpal has made a career championing the global warming and climate change issue. We established the Environmental Protection Agency and developed a Low Carbon Development Strategy.
When U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry recently declared that climate change is real and spoke of the disastrous impacts of climate change in developing countries and when Obama signed a Presidential Order to reduce carbon emissions from heavy-duty trucks, they were following Guyana’s example.
Guyana is an example around the world of managing and working its way out of a debt crisis. America can learn from us. We must build a nation of one people and one destiny, not divide our people into sections.
Times Notebook despises the practice of so many commentators of only highlighting negatives everyday in Guyana. Despicably, they even make up negatives or simply embellish them.
Times Notebook is not urging us to ignore our many mistakes and blunders. Our garbage problem is a failure of government and of our people. There is no political party on the right side of this equation.
Collective benefit
When political parties incited our people to violence in 2012 in Linden and Agricola leading to injuries and death, it is not the Guyana we dreamt of when we fought for independence and became a republic. Parliamentarians must not be spared when they behave recklessly as they do in Parliament today.
Celebrating our nation’s successes must not be a partisan matter. This must be our legacy – a nation that can work together for the collective benefit of all, a nation that avoids sectionalism and partisanship and forever commits never again to be suffocated by debt. We must be a nation able to celebrate our successes, even as we confront our failures – together as one people, one nation, one destiny!
