However the time is counted, the peoples of this land have never been truly free.  Physically free, perhaps, but never mentally and economically free from the crippling selfishness of political trustees who take advantage; political elders who disappoint; political brothers who betray; and political descendants who abandon.

For Guyanese, freedom has come to represent the weight of an albatross around the neck of existence, the nightmare of a society gone wrong, the stench of a place living badly for too long.  Thus today men and women long for freedom from the fear of political leaders with narrow self interests and an oppressive environment; freedom from the fear of running, running always towards a distant and uncertain destiny among strangers; freedom from the fear of unknown treacheries, which reduce all to speaking in careful whispers, and looking constantly over shoulders; and freedom from the fear of resentments that accrue and consume.

This is the way of life through which a political confederacy grows entrenched; in which a parliamentary cabal prospers; and from which the unfortunate cry out for emancipation.  But just like that old confederacy from a few centuries of yore, every reason is found to justify a damning existence.

Those holding the reins say it is a divine right that should not be denied; that it is justified.  They point to the happiness of the people, how satisfied they are. There are no concerns over being unable to find a job, or with meeting the tests of daily living. They get enough for rations; they are provided with enough to cover themselves; they are furnished with lodgings and shelter.  They feel very secure and will testify to being cared for well. They ask for nothing more; want even less.  And all of this is made possible through the benevolence of caring political overseers.  Masters who ask for very little in return; bend down and shine our shoes; clean up after us; wait silently as we sup on the fruits of your labour; fetch our bags laden with the stolen energy of your humanity; be silent about our depredations; protect us from the uprisings of malcontents and the ignorant.  This is the confederacy that rules over those trapped in fields of agony and shacks of desolation, where inhabitants long for a time of emancipation; one that is real and immediate.

This is the fettered existence of Guyanese slaving away for the unrewarding and the punishing.  They are happy doing so – Yessir! No Sir!  No problem, sir!  Behold a carefree people as they celebrate contentment with the good life.  Why fix what is not broke?  Why listen to appeals for change?  What is there to change?  Certainly, it cannot be about inequity or inhumanity or exclusion?  Look at the people! See how all are grateful to the Big Men in the Big Houses.

However the years are counted, and whatever the starting point chosen, this is the rose garden presented.  And so the governors will on this day wrap themselves – and captive listeners – in phrases artful and glowing as they gush about freedom.

But freedom from what?  Certainly, it cannot be from insecurity, hunger, exploitation, want, want of opportunity; or the crippling bondage of “extreme poverty”; by themselves the unyielding realities of Guyanese life.  Realities that the downtrodden know too well for they live them daily.  Now citizens must decide whether they will continue to submit passively and rejoice; or reach for the emancipation, as described by Malcolm X, of “awakening” and “enlightenment.”  It is emancipation from the callousness, from the psychological strangling, the emotional scarring; and towards the freedom of living in decency and dignity – and to do so right here.

Freedom for the wretched of Guyana to dream, to grow; and the freedom to just be; what they have always found on the foreign beachheads where they wash ashore.  Beachheads where the ragged are subject to indignities and reduced to imploring for bureaucratic kindnesses.  It could be the erratic sanctuary of Barbados rescuing fleeing compatriots; or other way stations at the end of the ‘underground railroad’ for runaway backtrackers.  Freedom through the Great Northern Migration of dozens daily and all year around, year after year to any place that will fulfil the longing to belong, and shed the bonds of successive oppressors.  This is the bitter harvest of emancipation, the defeatism delivered by political self determination.  Such is the stultifying and loathesome nature of this nation’s emancipation that it is willingly exchanged for foreign servitude of any nature.

For many reasons, none of this can go on much longer.  The capacity and tolerance for the crush is just not there any more.  Soon all that remain will be voice and heart and sinew.  Of necessity, these must be rededicated to the sacrifices to overcome and to restore some trace of dignity, some morsel of hope.  To struggle for this is worthy of the right to be called men: men of purpose, men of goodwill.  It can be done, but only if hungered for, and through wrenching demands.  The question is whether this nation is ready to liberate itself at last and for the first time.

All Guyanese have it in their hands to touch freedom, but only if they make hard unfamiliar choices.  There is the choice of emancipation as individuals from the clutches of party shackles.  There is the choice of emancipation as a nation from the vice of ethnic fears and loyalties.  There is the choice of emancipation for all from the penitentiary of the present, and the lockdown of the past.  The time has come for emancipation from the manipulators, from walking on knees, from feeding the beast that devours.  Let there be emancipation from the entangling chains of blind submission and voluntary servility.  Most of all, summon the courage and will to emancipate the thinking on how to bring strength, purpose, and meaning to this squalid existence.  Then there will be the time for stirring remembrance, even rejoicing.