Anti-PPP Africanists see Buxton as their Pavlovian experiments

Aug 11, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – The Mash-Day jail break was financed from abroad and the logistics shaped by a certain PNC lawyer who died a few years ago. The intention was to initiate a slow, violent harassment of the PPP government. Temporarily housed in Republic Park on the East Bank of Demerara, they were then located to Buxton.
One of the infamous myths about the Buxton terrorist movement was because of the police killing of Buxton resident, Shaka Blair, in Buxton, the village would be receptive to the gunmen. This is a piece of fiction. Buxton was the choice of the planners of the Mash-Day jail break.
Buxton is naturally seen by many Africanist leaders as the cauldron of Black aggression against any PPP government. It is a contemptuous distortion of the nature of the village. This is in stark contrast to the PPP’s relation with Enmore. Historically Enmore and Buxton have been seen by Guyanese people as latent volcanoes of frenetic supporters of the PPP and PNC respectively.
I grew up hearing people say that Buxton is not a place for PPP people to badmouth Black people. And Enmore is full of ignorant people who will let loose if PNC people go there to make trouble. But the PPP has never exploited the pent-up anger of Enmore the way the PNC does to Buxton.
The PPP has never targeted its Enmore constituency to create confrontation against the PNC state machinery the way PNC people inevitably rely on Buxtonians. It amounts to what Guyanese refer to in common parlance as “eyepass”.
Buxton was specially selected by the logistical planners of the Mash Day jail break because they felt that Buxtonians would be willing recipients for their Draculean manoeuvres against the PPP government. Let’s look at more “eyepass” against Buxtonians. When Clive Thomas became a jaded, faded superstar and chose to rollback the years, he identified Buxton as his fountain of youth.
Thomas went to Buxton and demanded that each working class family be given $5000 American dollars. Thomas got his wish. Buxtonians began to applaud the suggestion. But Thomas was trying to use Buxtonians for his own dying political career. Thomas didn’t go back to Buxton to explain why he ignored many Black businessmen and rented a place for his office from one of the richest Indian families in the Caribbean.
Thomas didn’t go back to Buxton to explain that the WPA didn’t give off even a whisper of dissent when President Granger decided not to proceed with the amendment to the anti-narcotic legislation to ease the harsh sentences for possession of small amounts of ganja.
I took my wife in 2019 to Church of God Road to patronise the bakery of Adrian Benjamin, a small businessman who is a family friend. We passed a car load of youths smoking marijuana. That was their lucky day. The police did not pass through the village. On that day, despite being a harsh critic of the APNU+AFC regime, I was “hail up” several times by Black youths.
Buxton was again the poor, helpless village to be used when PNC supporters in September 2020 were incited to wildness in Region Five by the toxic advocacy of David Granger and Joe Harmon. As the violence against Indians spread leading to the disconnection between Regions Four and Five and Regions Five and Six, PNC leaders sent emissaries to Buxton to join the terrorist acts. They were rejected. It was one of the most humiliating acts of insult against Buxtonians. The feeling at the time was that Buxtonians will stop East Coast traffic and burn vehicles and kill people.
Now we have the latest manifestation of the traditional contempt anti-PPP Africanists have for the great village of Buxton. A few days ago, David Hinds told Buxtonians that they must undermine the government at every opportunity. Hinds didn’t go to Linden, or in Leeds in Region Six or Den Amstel in Region Three. He shaped his advocacy in Buxton.
So for Thomas, the village of Buxton was so ignorant that the people there would have marched to Georgetown demanding $5000 American. For PNC leaders in September last year, the village of Buxton was a volcano of pent-up hate that could be unleashed against every Indian Guyanese. For Hinds, the village of Buxton is a room full of explosives just waiting for a match to be thrown on the heap.
Will it stop? I doubt it. Thomas, Eusi Kwayana, Hinds, the PNC leaders, ACDA, remnants of the anti-Indian racists in the WPA plus the lunatic fringe in the AFC will continue to descend on Buxton to incite decent villagers to destroy Guyana. Buxtonians must resist being seen as Pavlovian experiments.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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