Buxton occupied
Frankly Speaking...
By A.A Fenty
Stabroek News
January 24, 2003
Sometimes I do feel like responding “appropriately” to my occasional critics’ wishes and throwing in the journalistic towel. One does wonder sometimes: is it worth it all? The sharing of views, the personal opinion and/or analysis to provoke debate, hopefully leading to positive outcomes?
Then, please believe me, I am buoyed up by the welcome Friday encouragement coming my way every week with regard to these views. I keep repeating: there is a silent majority reading this who do not take to the television telephones or to the streets. And I certainly need no cheap popularity to bolster some ego, or some image.
And yes, I know reams have been written about the East Demerara village of Buxton. So I have but two spins to put on my offering today. They are gleaned from the first-hand knowledge of a female actually living in Buxton.
Perhaps it may assuage, however minimally, the remaining good people of Buxton who themselves are a new-type of hostage. Mind you, I’m not here professing to represent any “95% of innocent Buxtonians”. But I do refer to a number of now-scared households of law-abiding residents. Yes, I’m reliably informed that some families are made victims and hostages in their own homes when certain bandits bully their way into peaceful homes just after their brutal robberies. These crooks melt into the households when law-enforcement representatives attempt to execute their investigations. The householders are menaced, threatened not to inform, or co-operate with the police. To ignore them would be tantamount to signing death warrants, I’m told.
Don’t get me wrong. I also appreciate - from equally reliable persons - that there are those who collaborate with and actively support the bandits. For a cut of the Blood Money. Then there is the larger unfortunate reality of a village with a glorious history of justified protest and a legacy of solid human achievement now forever tainted as a bastion of banditry. The terms and concepts of siege, kidnap, ransom, hostage, execution, mayhem, murder and terror are now, unfortunately but indelibly, linked to a village I once produced a school text about.
Somehow, however, I feel that those very innocent households who are themselves now victims, can rise to the occasion; can conjure up methods and the moral fortitude to deliver up to the authorities the bandits and their sponsors who have sullied their once good name and legacy.
For, secondly, do you realise that just as the “Indians” in Buxton and nearby are being forced to evacuate their present homes and past lives, the good people of Buxton are now also hostage who can themselves experience no real joy or security? Just ask the Chesters! But they can make a change. They just have to make the difference. Because as I put it to the “church sister” this week, rather crudely: “When they run out of “Indians” to traumatise and brutalise, who do you think they’ll turn to next?”
God in Demerara
Hopelessly out of my depth in this matter of God the Creator of all things - and mankind, I have been exposed, nevertheless, to the views of the Christians - genuine and pretenders - on the matter of God’s Design for his world, his people; his responses or seeming indifference to matters such as are being manifested in our little, Christian - Muslim - Hindu Demerara today.
Cynical as I am, I yearn to understand the truth or wisdom behind the sermons I hear or the “religious” letters I read, regarding God’s Hand in the murder and mayhem in Demerara today - I’ve just read a letter - in this Tuesday’s Stabroek - by a Pastor Beresford, for example, in which he is asserting that too many believers (Christians?) have ignored the pleas and teachings of their God. He quotes God as warning: “Because I’ve called and ye refused. I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded. But ye have set at nought all my counsel and would, none of my reproof. I also will laugh at your calamity and I will mock when your fear cometh.....”
God goes on to warn His people that it will be too late to ask for His assistance after having ignored him. Inciden-tally, the same Proverbs of this wise worldly Solomon, at 27:12 advises: “A prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself, but the simple pass on and are punished...” This I believe is a simple admonition not to tempt the hands of fate, however Chris-tian or protected you feel. But more on that next time.
My wonderment remains for enlightenment: Is it the evil ways of men - the Hindus, the babies, the old ladies, the young policemen - of Buxton, Georgetown and the whole of Demerara, that now attract the wrath or indifference of God? Or is it the Devil triumphant? I’m open to guidance on this matter. For I suspect many Buxtonians and other parents of some Bandits profess to be believers. Help!
A moment with Moses
Yes, I actually paused, read twice and then reflected on the paper published by former PPP/C front-runner/hardliner, now Attorney Moses Naga-mootoo. One newspaper captioned the paper thus “Guyana needs new strategic vision and focused leadership”.
Put in its simplest form, the piece is actually promoting “institutional arrangements to execute a democracy which, Nagamootoo posits, “must therefore be Bi-partisan”. Moses is now more openly articulate on the need for some form of “shared governance” - whatever label is applied. In an interesting paragraph he asks: “For those who want to live in the sha-dow of Cheddi Jagan might we not ask: were he alive would he not have examined broadly all new ideas, even if those ideas are transient, to postpone an alternative that spells catastrophe or to buy time? Stability for a ruling party is worth buying”.
Well I don’t know that the major opposition force here would be - or is - willing to allow the PPP/C any “buying of time”. But I do think this document by Nagamootoo is thought-provoking and a basis for compromise. The trouble is: Moses can hardly influence the Boys at the top. Or can he?
In 1980, as a PNC PR man, I happened to be near the PPP elections meeting rostrum in Barr Street, Kitty, when Moses was drenched with acid by PNC hecklers. I’ve been told of the torture he and the late Fazal Ali and so many others went through.
But in these times if a person, a political animal like Moses - similar in intensity to Robert H.O. Corbin - can promote power sharing, who am I! And don’t suggest that he is doing so merely because he wants to catch the nation’s eye, now that Bharrat is “the boy”. That would be unkind, disrespectful, and naughty.
So let me dream again this week. For the possible survival of Guyana, I assemble two teams to join Civil Society to chart a political future. For the PPP/C: President Jagdeo, old Pandit Reepu, Moses, Henry Jeffrey, Jennifer Westford and Carolyn Rodrigues. On the PNC/R side: Robert H.O. Corbin, Old Oscar Clarke, Stanley Ming, R. Trotman, Clarissa Riehl and another female of enlightened Political pragmatism. (I sense R.H.O Corbin supporting me, in principle.) Encourage us to dream.
Just three jabs...
1) Will the Good Folks remaining in Buxton allow the criminals to make them isolated? No delivery trucks, no vendors, no utility workers, no normalcy? Will you partition yourselves!?
2) Next week: Robberies - and race.
3) Definitely next week: “A Saturday evening with Robert Corbin”.
‘Til next week!
