We are facing clear and present threat to our livelihood and security as Guyanese, and the nation state as we know it. This nation cannot afford to ignore or not demand answers from President Irfaan Ali that by 2030 our population will grow to three million and Guyana has run out of large acreage of coastal land for development. Coupled with those announcements made by Ali at the Guyana-Canadian Chambers of Commerce Dinner earlier this month, Venezuela’s soldiers and tanks are crawling on our land, and there is a heavy influx of unmanaged Venezuelan migrants coming to our shores.
It is not sufficient for us to accept the Venezuelan Ambassador’s reported explanation that the Venezuelan military presence on our land is the mobilisation of their troops “geared towards curbing illegal mining operations.” This is a responsibility of the Government of Guyana, including whether they want to conduct such an exercise with the partnership of others. Venezuela doesn’t get to decide this.
Neither must we accept the regime’s strategy that the migrants will be dispersed across the country. These are positions that lend to perception there are sinister motives, not excluding being tied to electoral opportunities, and place at risk our safety as a people. Successive Venezuelan governments have carried out the policy of making every citizen a soldier. Where Guyana has a territorial controversy with this neighbour, who continuously engages in behaviours and actions to covet our territory, the placing of Venezuelan migrants throughout Guyana is an asinine strategy that puts the nation and people at risk.
Our slave and indentured ancestors did not shed their blood on these shores nor struggle to achieve independent status to see, in less than three-quarter of a century, the majority of people are foreign forces. Neither could they have anticipated descendants of theirs would engage in actions that would facilitate the undermining of the nation state and threaten our individual and collective safety. The current case before the International Court of Jurist (ICJ) is having little or no impact on a people, long nurtured on the belief they are entitled to our land.
On this matter of land availability on the coast where Ali said the country is running out of large acreages, he must provide the data to validate this distribution, down to the last square inch. We know this is not the result of housing and indigenous business development, but that of external interests and some internal greed.
The PPP must account and no flimsy statement from the President should suffice for the parceling off and selling off of our land. Guyanese presently are struggling for a house lot to allow for the development of homesteads. Many are given a ‘2×2’ by the housing authority where they can barely engage in planting a kitchen garden, and/or rare chickens/layers for family consumption as is the customary practice.
This is not a partisan political issue, but rather an issue of national proportion that requires galvanizing every citizen, regardless of race, class or other association, in the protection and defense of the nation state, its resources and rightful heirs. The information that we could become the numerical minority in our land has serious implications not only for our rights, customs and way of life but indigenous institutions, Constitution and Laws of Guyana, and national ethos.
We face not only an existential threat from within, but we also have a regime that has abandoned its responsibility to all the people of this nation. The Jagdeo/Ali regime is not concerned about the nation only self, and to this end the Opposition must rise to the occasion and provide the requisite political leadership that would reinforce our motto, “One People, One Nation, One Destiny.”
The National Assembly must be convened as a matter of urgency to address the Venezuela situation (border security and migrants), the projected population explosion in seven years and the issue that we no longer have land on the coast for development. Three million people from approximately 760,000, in seven short years, boggles the mind.
Together we must also demand publication of the National Census for it is an important element in national planning and knowledge of population growth. We must not cede a blade of grass, and this must be reflected in our thought processes, policies, programmes, behaviours and actions.
