GAWU’s 43rd Independence Anniversary Message 2009

Four decades and three years (43 years) constitute a reasonable period in contemporary history after which any organisation, institution or NATION should continue to assess its development and its contribution to those who were or are to be its beneficiaries.

Both the government and the people of Guyana are observing such a national milestone – the 43rd Anniversary of Guyana’s political independence from Britain in 1966.

The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) as part of the people – a large workers’ Union – joins in these observances and celebrations. There is bound to be debate about just what political/governmental independence has brought us, when economic survival, let alone independence, has been an elusive challenge. But as GAWU has argued before, there are significant, lasting achievements to celebrate and, indeed, to preserve.

Guyana’s Independence story, for example, is one replete with the unrelenting anti-colonial struggles of Cheddi and Janet Jagan. Inside Parliament and on the streets, they led a national movement of the working-class to wrest control of our political destiny from the overlords of colonialism – the British government, the merchants and the sugar plantocracy. At Independence time we must celebrate their role and their eventual triumph.

We must also celebrate the return to democracy after the vital lost years of Independence.

Most of twenty-eight years after 1966 when the people’s will was stolen, when mis-management, extravagance, discrimination and migration combined to wreck our economy and future – were indeed lost. No wonder many Guyanese living at home and aboard, frequently ponder over the gains or advantages Independence brought us. More than any Government’s doing, GAWU celebrates the PEOPLE’S triumph in living together without the violence known elsewhere, but which was intermittently introduced here by the selfish and ambitious who tried to hold on to power. We celebrate Guyanese defiance of dictatorship and applaud current attempts to rescue our socio-economic independence from both internal and external factors and enemies.

The existence of constitutional freedoms and human rights is an appropriate environment for the new millennium’s developments we now experience determined to take root – in agriculture where sugar still thrives, though it has gone under elsewhere; in housing, health and education – the social services guaranteed in every national budget since 1993; in industrial and information communication technology and investment; even in the constant, structural battle to thwart the consequences of climate change, the rains, the floods.

Despite the lost opportunities and engineered setbacks over 43 years, GAWU knows that it would have been a national collective sin and shame NOT to have become independent. GAWU joins the Guyanese people as they work with officialdom to preserve that independence.

Happy Independence Anniversary to 2009.

Long Live Independence Guyana!!