Our country is small and our people are inescapably connected. I believe that last May we began the fight to take Guyana back; to give her the sort of grooming she deserved these past 50 years.

The more I think of where we were and where we are today, the more I see that many of those people who lead us carry heavy hearts full of anger, hate and bitterness. And their eyes are blind to the flaws of their own people, those people who are part of their special class.

This class of people, they look at us with their good faces smoothed into expressions that we want to see and they tell us the things that we want to hear. But worst of all, they promise us things; things that if given will strip them of their assurance of power. This is how I know their promises are empty.

Let me tell you what politics will gift you on our 50^th anniversary as a free nation. It will gift you hurt and anger and disillusionment and it will attempt to rob you of hope – what little you have left. In the end, you will ask this question over and over: were we ever a free people?

Now is not the time to settle and be quiet and accept that things will change. Now is the time to let our hearts be stirred so that our minds will become rational beasts with clear sight. Now is the time to take Guyana from its class of oppressors. And now is the time to answer them; not with violence, but with love, with logic and with peace.

And make no mistake, our oppressor has not been this person or that person or this group or that group. Our oppressor has been an idea; an idea which is holy to that special class of people. Our oppressor has been our tradition of politics and the leaders who have been its victims.

I know that you may want to believe that we can be saved by this side or that side, by this existing group or that existing group. But no one can save us but ourselves because if you compare both sides you will see how similar they are and you will see that their agenda is no different. The two decades before May 2015 were one group’s time and now this is another group’s time, their time to reign.

They told us that it is time and they were right. It is time to see them for what they really are, to see that they were never sincere and that they cannot forgive. It is time to see that hate and bitterness drive them in a power struggle that robs us; robs us of our lives and our time, things that can never be returned.