By the time the next Ramsammy’s Ruminations column appears, Christmas would have come and gone. Now is therefore the best time for this columnist to wish all our sisters and brothers in Guyana and in the Diaspora a merry Christmas. Christmas 2022 in Guyana, from all appearances, reflects the general optimism that our people feel about both the immediate and long-term prospects for our country. Everywhere in Guyana today, just a few days before the season, people are in high spirits as they prepare to celebrate Christmas 2022.
Business has been booming; people everywhere are decorating and dressing up their businesses, homes, and workplaces; and every Region appears to be competing for the best ONE GUYANA Christmas Tree. It has been a long time since Christmas appeared to have been so anticipated. Some say it is because COVID-19 had suffocated Christmas 2020 and 2021, and people are now making up for those two almost-missing Christmases.
We, however, believe the enthusiasm seen for Christmas 2022 is more reflective of the hope and optimism that is now universal in Guyana.
Indeed, while Christmas is a holy holiday for Christians, the holiday season that begins with Christmas and culminates with New Year’s Eve (Old Year’s Night) is one that all Guyanese celebrate. Thus, it is not just wishing our sisters and brothers a Merry Christmas, but wishing everyone happy holidays. We wish our sisters and brothers who are Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Bahai, Rastafarian, and from other religious designations – whatever their ethnicity and wherever they live in Guyana – a truly enjoyable season. As we approach the holiday season, we reflect on a year that has been, in every way and in myriads of ways, a truly remarkable year for Guyana.
The year 2022 might well one day be underlined as the year when we began transforming a dream into a realisable possibility in the lifetime of this generation. We need a vehicle to take us along this journey. As 2022 comes to an end, we have solidly chosen that vehicle – ONE GUYANA.
Guyana has been poised in 2022 to achieve the highest GDP one-year growth rate in our history. In fact, Guyana’s GDP growth rate for 2022 will be the highest one-year GDP growth rate for any Caricom country ever in the history of that organisation. The impact of Guyana’s growth is not just a paper thing, as some in the Opposition and those obsessive naysayers would inevitably complain. People are seeing it in our physical transformation, which is already visible. People are seeing it in the way public servants’ wages and salaries are changing. People are seeing it in the way the education, health, housing, and water sectors are changing. People are seeing it in the way both local and foreign investments are having an impact. People are seeing it in the way the international community is treating Guyana.
Over the last month, President Irfaan Ali has not only announced an 8% across-the-board increase for Public Servants and sugar workers, but has also announced salary adjustments for members of the disciplined services and the health sector, and has promised that teachers would also see adjustments in salaries. These adjustments are outside the 8% increase. Clearly, 2022 is signalling a major change in salaries and wages for workers in Guyana from 2023 to 2025. Public Servants believe that by the time President Ali’s first term as President comes to an end in 2025, their salaries would be near to, or even have already surpassed, the average Caricom annual salaries. Indeed, a great challenge now is for the Private Sector to catch up.
More than anything else in 2022 is the rallying call and the enthusiastic response of the Guyanese people for ONE GUYANA. President Irfaan Ali has not just been the “father” of ONE GUYANA, he has been the lead practitioner. Like no other President in history, he has expanded and taken the Bharrat Jagdeo model for governance, in which the Government is taken to the people, to a level never before imagined anywhere. Suddenly, in Caricom and in other countries, Heads of State are trying to emulate the people-centred approach that President Ali has made a centerpiece of his governance model.
President Ali has, in less than three years, visited hundreds of communities. He has been in communities that have never before seen a President. He has been in communities that have never even been visited by a Minister. President Ali has not only visited communities; he has worked and played with his sisters and brothers in communities across Guyana, whether those communities voted for him or not. He has even “limed” with communities, cooking and eating with them. He has sung with them, out-of-tune most of the time; he has danced with them, out-of-step most of time. He has been “loved” and has “loved” many in bottom-house domino games, never separating himself from the people. But the bottom line is that he has been with the people.
Truly, in 2022, President Ali consolidated his credentials as the People’s President.
Walking alongside President Ali and the Government, the people have resoundingly rejected the Opposition’s sour grapes attitude and racial and religious bigotry. The people have no patience with naysayers; a new dawn has arrived in Guyana: the people have been placed at the epicentre of Guyana’s development. ONE GUYANA is now the beating heart of a nation that is not looking back, but is blazing its way into a future of hope, progress, and prosperity.
