What kind of Guyana will Guyanese now build? — Brian Chin — Opinion

What kind of Guyana will Guyanese now build?

September 1, 2026·3 min read

Dear Editor,

An article by Adrian Carter in Barbados’s Daily Nation on declining standards^[1] recently caused me to reflect on Guyana. Carter wrote about social capital—the trust, standards, habits and shared expectations that allow a society to function well.

It is a particularly interesting lens through which to view Guyana as we mark sixty years of Independence amid an economic transformation few could have imagined a generation ago.

We understandably measure that transformation through oil production, GDP growth, investment and infrastructure. But GDP cannot measure whether people trust institutions, whether professionalism and customer service are improving, whether we respect shared spaces, or whether citizens increasingly feel responsibility for the society around them.

These things are another form of national wealth.

I spend considerable time in Guyana and travel back and forth frequently. I would never presume that this qualifies me to speak for those who live here every day, but it does provide an interesting vantage point. I listen to established businesspeople, members of an emerging middle class, and working Guyanese for whom the country’s extraordinary economic statistics can sometimes seem distant from everyday life.

Their circumstances differ, yet I repeatedly hear similar concerns: standards, bureaucracy, accountability, road behaviour, customer service, litter, professionalism, education and the simple difficulty of getting certain things done.

At the same time, the optimism is unmistakable. New businesses are opening, infrastructure is changing, opportunities are expanding and members of the diaspora are again looking seriously toward Guyana.

Both realities can be true. Guyana can be progressing extraordinarily quickly while still asking whether its social and institutional development is keeping pace with its economic growth.

This is not a criticism of any government or political party, nor an attempt to romanticize the past. Earlier generations endured poverty, political and racial turmoil, economic decline and enormous migration.

I am reminded instead of two Guyanese writers I greatly admired.

Ian McDonald spent much of his life examining Guyana with humanity, civility and affection. He could write candidly about bureaucracy, standards and unrealized potential without the partisan rancour that too often infects our national conversation.

My father, Godfrey Chin, approached Guyana differently. Through his Nostalgias, he preserved the everyday Guyana of neighbourhoods, businesses, cinemas, festivals, personalities, humour and ordinary people. Ian himself later wrote warmly about Godfrey and the importance of what he had preserved.

At Godfrey’s funeral, then Culture Minister Dr Frank Anthony described him as a cultural icon who, despite years abroad, never lost his “Guyaneseness.”^[2] In delivering my father’s eulogy, I described it somewhat differently: Guyana was his canvas.

Ian and Godfrey were very different writers, but both demonstrated something valuable: one can examine a country’s shortcomings without rooting against the country itself.

Perhaps we need more of that spirit today.

Oil wealth can build roads, hospitals, schools and bridges. But a first-class building does not automatically create a first-class institution. A modern hospital still requires a culture of care; a new school requires teachers and standards; a highway requires responsible drivers; and government and business alike require professionalism, integrity and service.

The expected visit of King Charles III later this year provides an interesting historical marker^[3]—not for nostalgia about colonialism or debate about monarchy, but simply for reflection. Sixty years after Independence, how far has Guyana travelled, and what kind of country do we now have the opportunity to become?

For much of our post-Independence history, Guyana’s conversation was necessarily about scarcity. Today, the question is increasingly not whether we possess resources, but what kind of society we build with them.

Can rising incomes be accompanied by rising standards? Can better infrastructure bring greater civic responsibility? Can institutions become more efficient and trusted? Can we preserve the warmth, humour and communal qualities Ian McDonald and Godfrey Chin cherished while improving the things that hold us back?

These are not government-versus-opposition questions. They are Guyanese questions.