Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 12, 2019 Letters
I take this opportunity to refer to that day of infamy – 9/11/2001 – and the attack on America by extremists.
In it, are lessons, which for some inexplicable reasons, leaders of every period and in every continent seem either unable or unwilling to learn. Lessons which are quite simple.
If we pause for a moment and understand history, we will appreciate the importance of learning from past events.
Briefly in 1914, the heir to the Austrian-Hungary throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were shot and killed by a teenage Bosnian student in Serbia.
Because of existing tension and distrust among the civilized nation states of Europe, within weeks, war broke out on two European frontiers.
Millions of lives were sacrificed and there was damage to properties including treasured works of art. The reason: distrust and unwillingness to sit around the proverbial fire-side and talk things through.
Have we civilized people learnt anything?
Four years later, the war ended in Europe with statements and pious promises for universal peace.
Twenty-one years later, this same month, September, the European Nations were again at war. It lasted longer in the First World War and ended around this time in 1945.
Why? Simple lessons were not learnt, to sit and talk things through.
Rather, we seem anxious to put unhelpful ingredients in the soup-pot, as we stir the soup of suffering, silliness and stupidity.
When will we learn to sit and talk things out?
I make these references, which cost millions of military and civilian casualties to refer to our own situation in Guyana.
If our Leaders, political, religious and community cannot develop the culture to sit and talk things through, we will certainly be on that prophetic path of self-destruction.
To argue about a man-made Constitution and who or who is not in breach of it, is a frustrating, time-wasting exercise.
This obsession of daily carrying on a propaganda campaign will not help us.
I wonder if our Leaders realize this?
If we present to the outside world, investors, business people and potential immigrants, a solid united front or I prefer a National Front, they will know that there is little they can get away with.
In this way, we can easily secure a prosperous green economy, so that every family, every community can enjoy the basic comforts of life, free education, high level of health service, and advance in music, sports and culture generally.
Last Sunday evening I attended the Annual Music Teachers in Concert and was impressed by performances of our young people, and in particular, bands from Berbice and Demerara, where the Government was able to train young persons to play musical instruments; an opportunity, that this moment, ordinary boys and girls could not have had.
And speaking with a representative of Social Cohesion, Mr. Tyndall, in the presence of Mr. David Dewar, I expressed some concern, that such forward steps are not in the public domain.
I did not see a battery of media personnel to cover this event. But I suppose, if there is a murder or the fulminations of some political figure or the statements of some modern day iconoclast, there would have been media coverage.
With the horrors, I refer to earlier, I can only plead with our Leaders – if they are really interested in Guyana and the succeeding generations – to put an end to this blame ‘the other man’s culture’ so that the blood, sweat and humiliation of our slave ancestors would not have been shed in vain; so that the indignities and sacrifices made by the Indentured Labourers would be fully vindicated.
The words of Billy Pilgrim, as I end on this note of optimism, ‘Can we do it? Yes we can!’
Hamilton Green
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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