We have lost five of our bravest. Our most resolute have been taken down and out by the forces of nature. It took that kind of incontestable power to bring them down, to separate them from us in this sometimes valiant, this frequently tragic vale.
Brigadier (Ret’d) Gary Beaton, Colonel Michael Shahoud, Lt Colonel Shaun Welcome, Lt. Colonel Michael Charles, and Sergeant Jason Khan. They will never be forgotten, recalled from our midst due to the urgency of the times, the heat in the air, the passions in the environment. Their families are mourning, and we mourn with them. All Guyana feels the pain of those cut short in life, and taken away too soon. While our hearts bleed, our eyes must open. This stuff from across the border is real; all the routines of Guyana are no longer the same, no matter how regular they may appear to be.
There is something different in the air, at the back of the consciousness, and it is not imagined. It is tangible and ominous, with the sinister harbored in the heart of this man Maduro spurring his faithful along a pathway with few options, one that he cannot conquer. He will have to stand against the world, and whether he is prepared to run that dangerous gauntlet remains to be seen.
What I have the greatest difficulty seeing is what represents the unbelieving. The government of today is comfortable in the belief that it has what it takes to prevail all on its own. It is a spurious belief; one that leaves the nation naked, when it doesn’t have to be. The Opposition has raised its hand, it has spoken, and the spoken words have been let us do this for Guyana. All of it, and not a section of it. All Guyanese, and not a fraction of them. All forward together in one spirit, and with one consuming passion: this is for Guyana to get to the kind of Guyana that has never been had before. It would be a lovely development, wouldn’t it? A rare moment of national grace, I would think. And if we could commit our energies and ethical capital to this healing and restoring project, then there is a chance, the growing hope, that it can be made to endure.
The wise Chinese have a saying, a single word that conveys two meanings: in disaster there is opportunity. I reword to arrive at the same meaning, but for a Guyanese significance: out of challenge, comes conviction, and the commitments to the possible that just could be. Despite the resistance. Notwithstanding the political calculations. In spite of, probably because of, long history and acid memory. If the memories of the five men that have fallen cannot jerk us out of the societal reveries, fail to separate us from the national complacencies, then we do both them and us great dishonor.
When we speak with two voices, and take separate paths, on the one issue, then what likelihood is true and lasting nationhood? It is an issue that can reengineer the whole of Guyana, change the nature of our existence, even crowd us into a small corner of the national map. Why is there this incomprehensible attitude on a day like this? What is the concern, the limitation, that makes for denying the oneness that is so imperative at a raw and tempestuous hour like this? A rampaging neighbor is threatening to wrench our peace apart, yet our local wars never cease, even is resistant to the call for a long national truce.
My thinking is that both the government and the opposition started out on the right foot on this Venezuelan menace, this made-up madness from Maduro. Then wisdom departed, and the right way was lost. No government can face and overcome this threat from neighbors alone. I write that in stone, and if such were to continue to dominate, then there is besmirching of the sacrifice of Gary Beaton, Michael Shahoud, Micheal Charles, Shaun Welcome, and Jason Khan. It should be noticed that the way is proceeded along today in a gingerly manner. The national situation calls for nothing else, and we all must rise to the occasion. I am trying. Differences must be cast aside, for there is an enemy that is on the move, and looking to swallow us up whole.
There is something close to clinical madness raging across this country’s western border. With the mindset that has taken hold, I believe that there is some of that flourishing on this side of it too. The bulk of our strength cannot be depended upon to originate from foreign shores, external forces. Every Guyanese must have some skin in this game of life and death. Five good men died. Let them not die in vain. We are sitting on a powder keg that is too close to a wildfire. The way to secure against scorching is to swaddle ourselves in as many protective layers as we can lay our hands upon.
I call upon the government to rethink going it alone, a sure recipe for tragedy. I urge the opposition to keep all options open, be ready to make good on its overtures and avowed commitments. Five citizens are no more. The time is now, and the time is for each Guyanese, to manifest in the most unequivocal and unambiguous terms that dealing with the Venezuelan monstrosity requires all arms be linked together, all feet marching straight ahead at whatever comes. And not at one another. I can think of no other way that we honor our dead. May Almighty God in his mercy give them eternal rest and peace in that special place that is the preserve of warriors.
