That Ministry fire: Exploding and exposing myths

Jul 20, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One of the most poignant editorials I have read for this year was the one in last Saturday’s edition of this newspaper. Titled, “The fire and the halt to any investigation,” this is a critical viewpoint like the hundreds of thousands that have been printed in the newspapers since the PPP has been in power.

But it is so powerfully trenchant, especially in the context of the vicious type of politics this country has seen where the blame game comes so easily, that supporters of the ruling regime should read it.

I would urge the reading public to take note of this editorial and also the one in the Stabroek News on the same subject in the Sunday issue of that paper.

The KN piece is just not your normal run of the mill opinion. It is a hard, cynical but realistic look at the nature of power in Guyana. At the end section of this viewpoint, I will offer my opinion as to what I think about the fire.

Here is a lengthy quote from the editorial; “the issue here is about the destruction of government buildings when there is focus on the institution. The Ministry of Works building in Kingston went up in flames even as an investigation was being conducted. A few years later, the Ministry of Housing was burnt down. Again there was an investigation. But even before that, there was an attempt to blame election protest for a fire that destroyed a building in the Ministry of Finance compound.”

The second half of Stabroek’s editorial does what all sane human being with common sense endowment should do – ask some questions that at first glance make one uneasy about the explanation of an attack on the building by PPP haters as Government officials would like us to accept.

The official version of arson by people with intent to burn down lacks more holes than a coconut grater. Most Guyanese who watch the television news and read the newspapers would be familiar with the sequence of events. Let us go through this slowly.

The flames were born in the uncivilised hours of the morning. They started on the top flat. There was no physical assault on the building by marauders because even sleeping guards would be aroused by the intrusion.

Locally made bombs (channa devices in local parlance as they are known) were found in a room that, according to the Stabroek editorial, quoting the Health Minister, was locked and could only be accessed from the inside.

What is the analysis? I could only offer mine here and I will do so by going back fifty years in time, then pass through the election violence of 1997 and 2001 and take the assessment to the present situation of elected dictatorship if space allows.

Most East Indians from the seventies onwards accepted the angelic character of the PPP and how that organisation was brutally assaulted in the 1960s by the PNC, wantonly killing Indians and attacking Freedom House and PPP supporters.

Young Indians were told that even PNC activists and Africans were killed when PNC/UF conspiracies backfired on them like the Sun Chapman bombing and the fire at the Abraham house. Research shows that in the sixties the PNC and the PPP killed people viciously and there was absolutely nothing angel about the PPP’s character.

After the election in 1997 and 2001, downtown stores were attacked. Indians became afraid and the PNC was blamed. But again research showed that agent provocateurs within the PPP, especially an infamous personality, paid some Albouystown youths to invade Regent Street stores.

The opposition was blamed for an arson attack on the Labour Ministry but conveniently the fire was confined to an empty room that contained old carton with discarded fires. But the propaganda was effective. Indians rallied around the PPP and hated the PNC even more. It paid off, the 2006 election was won by the PPP.

So here we are in 2009. Nothing is going in the Government’s favour. Everyday a scandal breaks out. One particular sordid tale about a drug lord looks like it will cause the destruction of elected dictatorship. And national elections are drawing close.

We now come to the proverbial drama. A group of PPP critics hold a picket exercise, is arrested, and held in the Brickdam lock-ups. The day after their release, a Ministry is burnt down. The nation is now being told about domestic terrorism. Indian people may get frightened again. I say “again” because it looks like they have recovered and may vote against their traditional habits. How convenient are the conspiracies of some politicians.

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That Ministry fire: Exploding and exposing myths

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