COMMENTARY Democracy Matters

Democracy

matters. This past week, on March 2, 2023, we observed the third anniversary of the infamous, brazen and shameful attempt by a PNC-led group to undermine the will of the Guyanese people at the March 20202 General and Regional Elections. At the same time we celebrate the third anniversary of the bold and courageous fight led by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP); a fight that included citizens from various other political parties and NGOs and ordinary citizens who presented a coalition of forces that fought to preserve democracy.

The PPP/C government is the result of that fight. President Dr. Irfaan Ali is the result of that fight. And in less than three years, of being in government, President Ali and the PPP/C government have begun a transformation that is rare in global history.

CARICOM”s basket case of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s is today the global jewel. Few countries in history have excited the world as Guyana is today. It is a remarkable and dramatic transformation. Guyana is moving so rapidly that truly we can say the future is here, now before our eyes.

Every and each single day in Guyana we see glimpses of the new Guyana. Just a few days ago, it was announced that Dr. Mahendra Persaud from the Guyana Rice Research center in Burma, Region 5, has been selected as the 2023 recipient of the Anthony N Sabga awardee for the Caribbean Excellence for Science and Technology.

In the meanwhile, an all-female surgical team is blazing new paths at GPHC, an achievement few countries can boast of.

A few weeks ago, Guyana’s Gudakesh Motie spun his way into Cricket West Indies record books with the best ever spin bowling feat in the history of West Indies test cricket.

Last week, a Guyanese girl blazed her way to the championship in 800-meter racing in the Big Twelve in the US, an incubator for world champions.

Anna Regina Multilateral is CARICOM’s school of the year 2022. Guyanese students dominated CSEC 2022.

President Irfaan Ali is a global leader for the world’s most aggressive regional food security plan, the 25 X 25 initiative.

This is our Guyana and the naysayers’ constant effort to diminish our country is unable to taint our stardom or stop the relentless drive for excellence in our country. Guyana is punching way, way above our small size and small country. We are impacting the world for the better in myriad of ways.

President Irfaan Ali articulated the future for Guyana during his address to the nation for Republic Day 2023. He was talking about Guyana post-2030. Guyanese are already beginning to see, not just imagine the Guyana of post-2030. For many of us, the future is already visible and evident. If anything symbolizes and exemplifies the Guyana of post-2030, two actual physical bridges are high on the list. Work has already started on the Demerara River Bridge which will replace the present bridge, a bridge that has long outlived its usefulness. The present bridge is a stark reminder of the old Guyana. People should begin to take pictures and video images of this bridge because future generations will need to see where we came from. Even as the new Demerara River Bridge has started to take shape, Minister Juan Edghill was in Suriname to further plans for the new Corentyne River bridge which will provide a continuous passage between Guyana and Suriname.

These physical bridges also serve to bring the old Guyana in full view of the new Guyana. These bridges are among the transformative physical infrastructure that would change the landscape of Guyana. These bridges, together with modern hospitals and schools, new hotels, new office buildings and high-quality housing schemes, new highways, are bringing an optics that rapidly and permanently leave the old Guyana behind.

The future is here. This new Guyana is not a mirage. In recognition of the new Guyana, already the UK has determined that Guyanese can travel to the UK without first obtaining a visa. Mexico is in talks with Guyana to similarly allow travel between Guyana and Mexico without first obtaining a visa. There is optimism that Guyana and Canada can conclude such agreements sooner than later. France will open its permanent office in Guyana, instead of just a visiting diplomat. When this happens, Guyanese can obtain their Schengen visa right here in Guyana. The Schengen visa allows Guyanese to travel to 27 European countries, including France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Finland, Austria. Other visa-requiring countries are likely to follow and it is not a mirage to think that dozens of countries that presently require visa for traveling will remove such stringent requirements before the end of President Irfaan Ali’s terms as President end in 2030.

Guyana a few years ago ranked as a country with one of the highest visa-rejection rates in the world when our citizens applied for visa to developed countries. But the development in Guyana since August 2020 when President Irfaan Ali was sworn in as Guyana’s 1oth President has propelled our place in the world. The dream of global recognition which not so long ago was thought of as impossible has come rapidly on the horizon. Truly the future is here. Right here in CARICOM, countries tried to block our citizens visiting. Indeed, some countries (we will generously not name them here) had special rejection benches reserved for Guyanese citizens. Today, our citizens are welcome. Far from the derision we suffered within CARICOM, when Guyana was deemed CARICOM’s basket-case, we today are being looked upon as the cornerstone for CARICOM’s own future development. Guyana has become a jewel in CARICOM and CARICOM leaders are knocking down the doors to come to Guyana as often as possible. This is the transformation our country is undergoing now under the leadership of President Irfaan Ali. We are now welcome to countries that once treated us as second-class citizens.

A Noble Laureate, together with a prominent Guyanese professor and researcher in oncology at the world-famous Anderson Cancer Center in Texas visited Guyana last week. They both agreed to serve as members of the Guyana Science and Technology Council that President Ali announced will be established within months in Guyana. Guyanese and international science experts will come together to advise and steer our country in the direction of using science and technology to make Guyana a world-leader within this region. The great America, Japan, India, China, and Singapore have all brought the future to the present by using science and technology. Guyana has decided we will also do the same.

Even as we contemplate the rapid transformation that the general elections of

March 2, 2020 resulted in, Guyana’s Minister of Health is hosting a team from Spain who will work with us to establish and strengthen the organ transplant commission that the new Organ Transplant Act of Guyana mandates. This new law is intended to make Guyana the transplant center for CARICOM. Already, Guyana does more kidney transplants and corneal transplants than all CARICOM countries combined. But in the coming months, Guyana is about to transform how transplants are being done in CARICOM. We are planning CARICOM”s first ever cadaver transplant. Presently a living person donate a kidney to another person. However, in the developed countries, they also take organs from a person who is dead. In this case one person can donate organs to several persons. Up to now, no country in CARICOM has been able to do so. Guyana is putting the technological capacity in place to allow our transplant surgeons to utilize kidenys now or other organs later for transplant. The transplant medicine we dream about in the future is coming to Guyana now.

In this regard, Silica City, a dream of President Ali, has begun to take same along the Linden Highway. Silica City is an example of what we can build and make Guyana through a technology-driven society. President Ali wants Silica City to be an example of a physical transformation that beckons the world to see Guyana as a technology-driven country.

Already, works have started to build the first 100 homes. This will be CARICOM’s first ever smart-city and only one of a handful globally. It will be powered by renewable energy and embrace the government’s LCDS, the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN’s SDS

Goal 11. In five years, Silica City is envisaged to have a minimum of 3,000 homes and eventually will be the home of almost 13,000 families. With this past week’s contract of $2.1 B to start the construction of Silica City, the future is no longer the promise, we are making it happen.

For too long, Guyana has been under-developed, not just by our colonizers, but also by our own people. Dictatorship allowed the PNC-led governments after Independence and between 2015 to 2020 to consolidate Guyana’s under-development that was pushed by the colonizers.

In under three years, President Irfaan Ali and the PPP government have begun the physical and technological transformation of our country, such that already the new landscape has begun to become visible to our people. The Corentyne and Demerara River bridges are merely only two physical structures that are enabling Guyanese today to see the Guyana of tomorrow. The single data card that the President is pushing for 2023 will bring technology to the everyday lives of our people.

Globally people have been talking about “the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, about how new technologies are “fusing the physical, digital, and biological worlds.” The new Guyana promises to train our people to function in a world that combines people and machines to get things done in a way that is not only more productive, but also more rewarding to the worker. The fight between March 2 and August 2, 2020 was for this.

This new Guyana is not what we merely dream about. Democracy and a vision-driven government and leaders are bringing the Guyana of the future into reality today. Democracy matters.