I took my dog to see the biggest circus ever at Cuffy Square yesterday

Mar 28, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I remember when I was a very small boy my mom took me to the circus. The ground was somewhere on Thomas Lands; the National Park didn’t exist then. When I became a father, I took my kid three times to see the circus, the last being Circo Romano at the National Park.
Yesterday I took my dog to see the biggest circus ever held in Guyana – Circo Guyano. The alternative name as stated in last Sunday’s advertisement in Kaieteur News was, “Bringing Government to the People (BGTTP). If anything done by the government of the day in the colonial and post-colonial history of Guyana was a failure, BGTTP was yesterday.
Most people are under forty in Guyana. But for folks like me who are in their sixties, on entering the Cuffy Square, a whiff of the Burnham era touch your mind when public servants and others were expected to fill the space where President Burnham had his bandwagon on display. Nothing made sense at BGTTP. Nothing looked logical at BGTTP. Everything looked wrong at BGTTP.
I turned west into Homestretch Avenue to get to the BGTTP circus. A traffic rank stopped you to say you cannot travel because the crowds have occupied Homestretch Avenue where BGTTP was being held. You had to travel west on Hadfield Street. The vast tarmac of D’Urban Park was locked off so there was only parking on Hadfield Street which is a narrow lane. Why would the government have such a large event and not open up D’Urban Park to accommodate vehicles?
I parked way up eastern Hadfield Street and walked to Square of the Revolution with my dog. As I gazed upon the scene, confusion was graphic. As I entered Square of the Revolution ground, a woman came up to me.
She intoned; “You can quote me, Mr. Kissoon; my name is Verna Austin of Kitty. A big business falsified a Deeds Registry document and took my property and they just said they cannot help me.”
This is where BGTTP was an abysmal failure. The same bureaucrats that have misled and mistreat citizens when they go to them in the public sector institutions are the same bureaucrats tending to citizens’ queries.
There was a Central Housing and Planning Authority booth manned by the same technical people that toss your application aside and forget about you. You had to take your complaints to them.
As I moved further, my Wortmanville friend from the past, Dexter Vanveen, was trying to manoeuevre into a large crowd to get a house lot application. He said to me, “Freddie, can you get one for me?”
I asked him how was I going to get into that crowd. Why aren’t there forms on a table for people to pick and complete? I met another Wortmanville friend who was born next to my home. His name is Calvin Hector. He showed me replies and replies from the Ministry of the Presidency which promised to look into his requests but nothing has been done so far.
Thousands of persons had to line up and take a number. When their number is called, they go up, state their complaints and they are told to go to the particular booth that will deal with them.
While interviewing people, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the director of Department of Public Information, Imran Khan. He joking said that the place is for people who have complaints and not dogs. I told him my dog had a complaint. I said to Imran that with that huge number of people in the line, the waiting will be long and run way into the evening.
He said, “We will be here.”
Minister Winston Felix let me know in pellucid semantics that his ministry is not responsible for the permanent prisoners at the Diamond Police Station and for facilitating their movement out of Guyana. He said that is the jurisdiction of the police force.
I went up to the Commissioner of Police and relayed what Felix had just said. The Commissioner acknowledged that the permanent foreign prisoners are a police issue and he will look into it.
The most interesting event at BGTTP was the open confrontation between the Prime Minister and AFC executive Derek Basdeo over allegations of the rigging of internal elections in the AFC in Berbice.
Mr. Basdeo came up to me in the presence of other AFC officials and said he wants to go public with what he knows. What he said was so shocking it indicates that the AFC has imploded. For me BGTTP was the biggest circus ever. My dog loved it.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News