It’s important we reflect on the difficult road we traversed in our quest for nationhood

Dear Editor
The vast majority of Guyanese living today would not have been around or were too young to experience the moment of political independence which took place on May 26 1966, thereby bringing an end to over 150 years of British colonial rule.
For many who were around at the time, it was a bitter-sweet feeling – bitter at the thought that the country was not granted independence earlier as a result of the intrigues and machinations of the British Government under pressure from the US administration to withhold independence to the colony until the Jagan-led PPP was removed from power.
It is no secret that the PPP was engineered out of office in the elections of 1964 in what former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson described as a “fiddled constitutional arrangement” aimed at the removal of the popular and democratically elected PPP out of ideological and geo-strategic considerations.
The country paid a high price for this miscalculation on the part of Britain and the United States as it retrogressed from among the most prosperous in the region to the poorest in the hemisphere in per capita terms, not to mention the destruction of the democratic fabric of the Guyanese society.
The above notwithstanding, the majority of Guyanese breathed a sigh of relief when the Union Jack was lowered and the Golden Arrowhead lifted thereby signaling the birth of a new nation.
The hopes and aspirations of Guyanese for a free and independent Guyana were soon to be dashed by the rupture of the democratic process and the institutionalisation of minority rule by the Burnham regime and the concomitant denial of basic freedoms including the right to free and fair elections.
It is important that we reflect on the difficult road we traversed in our quest for nationhood and vow as a people to work assiduously to consolidate our independence and our democratic institutions.
Hydar Ally