Caught in the Middle

Oct 07, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

My late and honoured friend who would have been one of the most outstanding legal minds in the Commonwealth, having won four consecutive appeals before the Privy Council, Sir Fenton Ramsahoye, advises that one of the things a man/woman doesn’t know is that ‘he/she does not know’. This was the mute reaction too many felt when they heard of the audacious reference to the ‘Middle Street’ and the ‘Promenade Gardens’ (indeed at a time when the current Indian Administration shows disrespect for the philosophy of Gandhi, as it continues to mistreat the more than twenty million muslims in India).
But that apart one wonders by what authority the suggestion could be conceived that:
The name of the Promenade Gardens should be changed in recognition of a foreigner who has absolutely no connection to this country.
The following is but a brief profile of this restful place in our Capital City: “Currently located on a portion of the field then known as the Parade Ground. During the day, the Promenade Garden in Cummingsburg is a quiet place to relax, read and enjoy the flowers. Its tranquility is in stark contrast to its role in the 19th century as a public execution site during the Demerara Revolt, a slave uprising that took place in 1823.
Occupying one city block, with its main entrance located on Middle Street in Cummingsburg, in 1851 steps were taken to transform the site into the Promenade Gardens, a garden which was designed by a Trinidadian botanist in 1851, with seats constructed for the public in 1859.
The Promenade Garden is home to a Victorian-looking Bandstand erected in 1897 in commemoration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and it is considered the oldest bandstand of three in the city.”
Middle Street
It was on Middle Street that key activists of the 1823 Demerara Revolution were forced to drag their coffins on their way to being beheaded. 200 slaves were beheaded and their heads placed on stakes at the Parade Ground.
It is exceptional in any case for a monument to be erected in any country to anyone who has not been a contributor to its history in any way.
In any case, surely commonsense must speak to the reality of further exploding the division amongst a population too small and too tense to absorb more.
This Administration could find no justification for attending to what in the final analysis is a most simplistic notion that could only have originated from a local community – erratically implicating the particular resident High Commissioner.

Elijay Bijay

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