They told us it was a new dawn. They promised progress, opportunity, and a future we could build right here on our own soil. But for me, and for thousands of young Guyanese like me, the so-called “new” administration feels like a grim rerun of an old, corrupt movie. The actors are the same, the script is unchanged, and the ending—for us—is just as bleak.
I fight hopelessness in Guyana every day.
I fight it when I see the job postings, offering salaries that were outdated a decade ago, for positions that require you to know a party member to even get your foot in the door. I fight it when I scroll through social media and see the “selective and connected” youth, the ones with the right last names or from the right villages, flaunting their new contracts, their new cars, their newfound status as beneficiaries of the largesse of the Guyanese people. They grow fat while the rest of us starve for a chance.
I fight it when I remember the “morons,” who so publicly prostrated themselves on behalf of this administration during the election cycle. They shouted the loudest, sold their dignity for a place in the parade, and what did they get? A crumb. A token. A fleeting moment of relevance before being cast aside, proving that in this system, even loyalty is disposable if you’re not from the inner circle. The phrase “5 mo years pun dem” now rings in my ears not as a victory chant, but as a sentence. Five more years of what?
Five more years of watching my paycheck evaporate at the supermarket checkout.
Five more years of hearing about another robbery, another murder, while feeling the walls of insecurity close in.
Five more years of dodging the same potholes on roads that never seem to get permanently fixed, while gleaming new SUVs owned by the connected fly past.
Five more years of a procurement system that isn’t just broken, but brazenly biased, a rigged game where the winner is decided long before the bids are opened.
They tell us we have “free education.” But what is the value of that education if the only rational choice is to leave? We are caught in an impossible trap. We are told to stay and build Guyana, but the system is designed to make staying a form of professional and personal suicide.
And now, the escape hatches are slamming shut. Canada, the UK, the US, the traditional lands of opportunity for ambitious Guyanese, have all enacted a massive anti-immigrant agenda. The doors that were once slightly ajar are now being reinforced with steel and suspicion. The message from the world is clear: you are not welcome. The message from our own government is: you are not connected.
So here we are. Trapped. Told to succeed right here but systematically denied the tools to do so. The oil money flows, a tidal wave of wealth that seems to only irrigate the gardens of the already-powerful. For the rest of us, it’s a drought.
This is the battle I fight daily. It’s not against a political opponent; it’s against the crushing weight of apathy. It’s the fight to get out of bed each morning and believe that my hard work, my degree, my ideas, matter more than my ethnicity or my address book. It’s the fight to believe that this land, so rich in potential, has a place for me.
I want to believe in Guyana. I want to pour my energy into my home. But believing feels like a foolish gamble when the house is so blatantly stacked against you. We won’t be succeeding under this PPP government, not because we aren’t capable, but because the system is structured to ensure that only a chosen few ever do.
The fight against hopelessness is the real war facing Guyana’s youth. And right now, it feels like we are losing.
