A moment last year in Guyana when a small man defeated three Goliaths

Jan 14, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Long before Minister Robeson Benn began his journey of “selectism”, I did an article about the lack of police action on Holmes Street. Holmes Street is the continuation of Quamina Street as it makes its’ way over Main Street into Tiger Bay.
On Holmes Street between Water and Main Streets, a fishing company has used the roadway to conduct its business. This fishing company permanently placed three humongous refrigerated containers on Holmes Street the past five years. It is in these units that they conduct their business.
The principle of flotation discovered more than two thousand years ago by the ancient Greek scientist, Archimedes, operates here. If you put three monstrous containers on a street they will displace the space other vehicles have to occupy.
I did the column against the background of the City Council moving against road obstruction. Why were these three colossal objects not moved when they had virtually taken over Holmes Street? This was crass injustice.
Then a personal experience galvanized me into writing. One day, I drove on Quamina Street into Holmes Street to get to Water Street to do my shopping. The traffic turned into chaos. East bound and westbound traffic couldn’t move because of these stationary refrigerators.
Long after that column was published, Robeson Benn began his “selectism” bandwagon. Let us explain what “selectism” is. The Ministry of Works founded a campaign to rid the country of obstructing structures on public lands. One certainly could not have argued with this.
In any country, the population would not object to that. But this is horrible, tragic, tyrannical Guyana where the most disgusting forms on injustices just do not find objection among the country’s citizenry.
The Ministry of Works’ campaign became a caricature and a horrific vehicle of injustice. Some encumbrances were roughly demolished while graphic monstrosities remained untouched. Mr. Benn could not have watched any citizen in his/her eyes and say that he was moving even-handedly.
I could have pointed the Minister literally; I repeat, literally, to hundreds of illegal structures that were not only encumbrances but also the barefaced hijacking of public parapets for private use. Some of these were so known that the Ministry had to be aware of them.
As the Ministry’s bulldozers moved all over Demerara, I zeroed in again on the three gargantuan refrigerators and asked Mr. Benn why no attention was directed to this barefacedness.
This was my second opinion about the madness on Holmes Street. On December 15, in the midst of the Christmas shopping, chaos again descended in that area because of the fishy business.
Then the fishy business became really stink. Just opposite the fishy process is one of Guyana’s longest standing businesses that was established since the fifties – Humphrey’s. One day last year, an incident occurred on that road that showed what a horror story Guyana is.
As the traffic became a jungle of metal because of the road-side refrigerators, a police vehicle with four personnel descended on the Humphrey Store and ordered the supervisor to move his car because it was blocking traffic. The man’s car was parked outside his workplace.
The soft-spoken gentleman informed the police that he has parked in that spot for the past two decades long before the fishing company ever dreamed of catching fish.
In other words, he was telling the police that his car was not the problem. The police should have learned the point – the traffic disorder was being caused by the container not his parked vehicle. But the police were not interested in learning anything. Then the standoff ensured. This was the crudest form of bullyism you can have anywhere in the world.
This honest hard-working man was being taken advantage of. But he was brave and he stood his ground. The blockage was coming from the containers not his car. He told me he wasn’t moving one inch.
What actually happened is that the three Goliaths came together to oppress this small man. The fishing company has a close relation with the ruling party. The ruling party, to protect its resources, instructed the police to pounce on the employee’s car. Here is the interesting point.
The supervisor told me that as the police approached him, they all smelled of fish. I asked him to explain. He said they stopped first at the company and collected their stacks before they attacked him. How many more small people the three Goliaths took advantage of in 2009?
To think that decent people will go out there and vote for fishy people doing fishy things with the freedom of their country.

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