Take a stand for Guyana
Today, therefore, I plead for tomorrow. I must. After tomorrow, I urge all to be engaged enough to dive deeply inward to discover and kindle the graces that could lead to sanity not savagery; to the positive possibilities and not the degrading devastations; and to progressing past our substantial disfigurements, instead of reinforcing them. This would only come from pausing during the hurricanes of elections season to be open to that tiniest of spaces within, to incline ear for that different whisper, and then actually to hear it and do something about its message. The message from me to my fellow Guyanese is this: take a stand against the hysterias and passions that imperil; take a stand for the extended family, that is, of country.
I charge all Guyanese to respect the rights of assumed adversaries by being responsible; be restrained, be sober, be about the obligations of democratic and spiritual citizenship of a different kind from what we have known. I suspect, even fear, that hard heads and harder hearts will reign supreme and dismiss out of hand. Still, I must persist.
And thus I reach for those with higher learnings from this life, those with broader insights, those with more human and more altruistic instincts to give free rein to the nobler rather than the baser impulses that lurk inside and always threaten to overpower the best of intentions. I call upon peers to burnish and deploy intellect and experience and energies towards what is better for this country, and for brethren without exception.
Even as I place this before contemporaries, I recognise that in the combustible cauldron of contest - the life and death competition for ascendancy and power - that these thoughts of mine for the temperate most likely will bounce off the steel trapdoors of minds firmly bent a
certain way or, worse yet, irreversibly shut and locked. Nevertheless, I must persevere before those interested enough, caring enough, and willing enough to be leaders in that which takes to another place.
There is not much else left to share. All has been said and argued and condemned. This is where we are today. I trust that tomorrow and thereafter could signal a new and bright Guyana: one of high ground; one of more settled fellowship; and one grateful for its many gifts and for its many sons and daughters. I go forth to whatever comes. May it be to a better place, through a better passage that ushers to realising the best of our potentials.
My parting word is this: as rights are exercised, there are obligations that come with them, which are inseparable and nonnegotiable. I look on high and whisper: watch over this process, watch over this country, watch over all of us.
Yours faithfully, GHK Lall