Guyana’s Selective Outrage

Guyana’s Selective Outrage

We live in a country where there is a selective outrage that haunts the land. A selective outrage that etches away at our very motto of One People, One Nation, One Destiny. This is a country where political lightweights would spend hours on their little TV shows incensing a nation with their shallowness, where they would easily put the loss of life and the loss of property on the same level.

This is a country where citizens are told to let progress continue and then that same voice ushers off their mates to a foreign land to give birth to their young.  This is a land where commentators on all sides of the aisle always appear to stray way past the point and in doing so cloud the pursuit of justice.

This is a country where young men are bundled up on a Friday afternoon and dumped into the lock ups for the weekend for no offence, have their photographs taken and their fingers printed and then just released on a Monday morning as if they are late for the job they don’t have. This is a country where young and old attorneys alike drive past those same lock ups in their fancy rides without ever glancing over to see what may be taking place to some innocent soul and how they might be able to help.

This is a country where some in the private sector wake up as if they have had a hangover. They appear to have no clue of what’s happening around them and no idea of what may have gotten us in this place.

This is a country where your 12 CXC passes may only be good to continue studying at the University of Guyana and when you would have completed those studies, your degree or diploma may best serve you in some other country.   This is a land where young Doctors who would have spent years studying in Guyana and Cuba find themselves in a system that many times does not cater for their training and in a system that pays them a salary that could be compared to the meals allowance to their colleagues just across the blue seas in the Caribbean.

This is a country where some in our security forces ignore their responsibility to protect and serve and would rather replace that with shoot to kill. Where police officers are thrown onto the streets as guardians of peace without understanding how to maintain peace and without the adequate training. Where officers of the Guyana Defence Force have to write to the President himself to question why their promotions are being blocked by their immediate superiors. Where young officers who would have spent years studying and qualifying themselves are thrown responsibilities that do not effectively make the best of their training.  This is a country where our teachers find themselves being disrespected by students and parents alike and sometimes for them no one is hearing their cry. This is a country where teachers disrespect their students at times forgetting for a moment that they have children of their own and would not want their children treated badly.  This is a country where in the deep valleys of the interior our Amerindian brothers and sisters continue to complain even to foreign press that they are being treated as second class citizens.

This is a country where our teachers find themselves being disrespected by students and parents alike and sometimes for them no one is hearing their cry. This is a country where teachers disrespect their students at times forgetting for a moment that they have children of their own and would not want their children treated badly.  This is a country where in the deep valleys of the interior our Amerindian brothers and sisters continue to complain even to foreign press that they are being treated as second class citizens.

This is a country where in many of those same hinterland communities young girls and women are shoved into a life of prostitution and  where they would either abandon or in a few cases offer to sell their babies just to live what they consider a stress free life.

This is a country where health care sometimes appear as no care. Where pregnant women share a single bed in the public hospitals, where delivering a child is more than a high risk condition and where HIV continues to haunts a young population that would rather spend $1000 on a round of beers than on a pack of condoms to protect them from the realities that are out there and that could have the better of them after that round of beers.

This is a country where poverty is widespread and where you have the very rich and the very poor. The middle class may not exist.

This is a country where those selected to lead always appear to be following and this cuts across evenly to all sides. This is a land where our Olympians are insulted by their Director of Sport and he moves on to the next hurdle. This is a country where the word “Justice” seems like part of a Jeopardy category. This you will most likely not get in Guyana…What is Justice.

But this is also a country of beauty, a country rich in potential and a country with a loyal people.

A country that could become an economic power house if only for one moment some of us really put country first and realize that on the morning after an election, the responsibility shifts from rallying a base to rallying the cause of a people and of a nation.

Guyana’s heart is bleeding and it is time to drop the selective outrage and replace that with smart and intelligent decisions, smart and intelligent answers, smart and intelligent discussions, smart and intelligent choices.

A Land of Six People cannot move forward if those six people do not respect each other and themselves and understand that when the wind blows and blows strongly, we would have nothing else to hold onto but each other.

Today I say a small prayer for my homeland.

Today I pull another page from my notebook.

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