Benn’s benthoscope and Guyana’s bennettitaceous dictatorship

May 17, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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On November 30, 09, I did a column on Minister Robeson Benn’s destructive benthoscope. This year, the Stabroek News ran an editorial on this Minister’s roaming machine, which according to the Minister, is intended to clear Guyana’s parapets of encumbrances. Benn’s benthoscope has indeed roamed all over Guyana demolishing erections Mr. Benn says are in the way. I did a few other pieces on Benn’s tentacles with emphasis on his destructive habit rather than his building capacity.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Ministry of Works going all over Guyana and bulldozing illegal structures. Such activities occur in other countries. Missing from Benn’s arsenal are his creative machines. What is he building, what is he fixing, what is he repairing? The answer is hardly anything. Why should the population accept a Minister moving all kinds of obstructions off Government’s reserves but he cannot change the bulbs on the highways that have been out of order for years, the traffic lights that can never function for an entire week and re-order the asininely calibrated traffic signals.
I live on the Railway Embankment and some bulbs have died since last year. There are wrongly calibrated traffic signals that are going to cause devastating accidents. If you are traveling south on Vlissengen Road to turn west into North Road where the Georgetown Football Club is, two green signals flash at the same time in opposite directions. The drivers going straight into Irving Street have the green and there is a green light for drivers turning west. How come Minister Benn knows who are building illegal structures but he doesn’t know which bulbs need changing and which traffic lights aren’t working? The traffic lights at Lamaha and Albert Street and the ones at Brickdam and Brummell Place died a year ago.
Here is a Minister who boasts that he is protecting Government’s lands but he is not competent in other areas. He brought a bitumen plant from India at a huge cost to taxpayers and it couldn’t work in Guyana. At last, Mr. Benn’s benthoscope may have run aground. This time it is not Frederick Kissoon, the Stabroek News, the Kaieteur New and the opposition that are criticizing Mr. Benn but a wealthy CEO who is not known to be unfriendly with the Government. Mr. Brian Tiwari of BK International, a construction firm that is known to be the recipient of handsome contracts from the Government, has been quoted in the press of making unambiguous statements about the destructive activities of Mr. Benn’s Ministry. Doesn’t mean Tiwari is right but this bravado Minister who shamelessly sends his benthascope to liquidate the harmless constructions that some citizens have put up has become meek when he told the Stabroek News that requested a response from him on Mr. Tiwaris caustic observation, “No comment.” Since when words have failed this “no-nonsense” Minister?
Here are some statements from Mr. Tiwari about Mr. Benn as quoted from the KN and SN in relation to the collapsing Supernam stelling, “A clearly upset Mr. Tiwari stated that Minister Benn said publicly that he would not be spending a cent more on the stelling. However a few months later, millions were spent to make modifications.”  Let’s quote from SN, “When the stelling was handed over, Benn and other officials were present and Benn behaved badly.” Now let’s go directly to the mouth of Mr. Tiwari. He blurted out; “Whatever the Ministry has done here is a willful act” Mr. Tiwari continued; “They have damaged this place entirely.” And once more from the mouth of Mr. Tiwari; “They have brutalized every single thing” (end of quotes). In analyzing what Mr. Benn has been doing since last year, I situated his activities with the theory that posits that colonialism has so damaged its subjects psychologically that coercion is the only game the post-colonial leaders understand. Post-colonial leaders coerce and destroy. Those are the instincts they inherited from brutal, colonial rule. This explains why they leave no lasting legacies in their countries and they continue to beg the former colonial masters for aid.
Mr. Benn will carry on because he is protected by a bennettitaceous dictatorship that has gone on for too long. It is a fossilized degeneracy that the Guyanese people should have confronted a long time ago. In this bennettitaceous fascism, the Leviathan doesn’t have criteria by which the underlings can be judged for egregious incompetence. Dictatorship has no logic. It has no sense of decency. Sexual perversion, pathological corruption, morbid incompetence do not bring downfall. But why should it? Is the Leviathan any better than the underlings?

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