“Every Guyanese must defend our Republic” – President Ali in 56th Republic Day message

Message by His Excellency Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali
President of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana on the occasion of Guyana’s 56th Republic Anniversary 

Fifty-six years have elapsed since Guyana severed the remaining constitutional threads that bound us to a distant monarchy and boldly stepped forward to chart its own course as a Cooperative Republic.

The 23rd of February 1970 was far more than a simple change in legal status. It was and remains the thunderous declaration of our people’s definitive assertion of their sovereignty. On that historic day, we declared with one voice, that sovereignty does not trickle down from a throne; it surges upward from the collective heart of the nation. It resides in the will of the Guyanese people.

With this seismic shift came an equally profound shift in responsibility. If sovereignty now flows from the people, then it is the people’s sacred duty to be its ultimate guardians. The people are the sentinels of the country’s freedom. It is the responsibility of every single Guyanese to defend our Republic against the insidious forces that would seek to stifle our democracy or to snatch our territory. All Guyanese must continue to stand united, a granite wall of defiance, against those who would return us to the days of unrepresentative government and those who seek to covet even our sovereign territory.

But the defence of our Republic is not merely a shield against external or internal threats. We must equally defend our Republic by forging a nation that is truly free—free from the shackles of poverty, free from the blight of ignorance, and free from the chains of inequality.

Our charge is to construct a prosperous homeland where the bountiful resources of our nation are harnessed for the benefit of all; a land where the wealth generated from our agriculture, gold, our bauxite, our forests, and now our vast oil and gas, becomes a shared blessing.

Let our republic not be a static monument to the past but rather a living, breathing promise for the future. It is the ground upon which we build our dreams under the unifying banner of One Guyana.

Let our One Guyana neither be exclusively inward-looking, cowering in the shadows of parochial fears and tribal suspicions, nor outward-fearing, trembling before the winds of global change or the ambitions of those who wish to covet our sovereignty. Instead, let us stand tall as a people confident in our identity, proud of our heritage, and secure in our sovereignty – a nation that opens its arms to the world while keeping its feet firmly planted on Guyanese soil.

On this, the 56th anniversary of our cherished Republic, I call upon every son and daughter of this soil to look upon our Golden Arrowhead with renewed pride. Let us recommit ourselves, with passion and purpose, to the ideals of a strong, stable, free, united, and prosperous Guyana. Let us fashion a republic so free, so united, and so prosperous that it will stand as an unshakeable legacy for generations yet unborn.

Happy Republic Day, Guyana!