The Buxton Proposal: Subliminal ethnic instinct

Oct 07, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – In August 2018, at an indoor presentation in Buxton, Dr. Clive Thomas made the proposal that poor households should be given a cash grant of 5000 American dollars from oil revenue.
Dr. Henry Jeffrey then wrote to inform us that the idea originally came from him in 2017 (see my column of Friday, September 28, 2018: “The circus is in town but was always in town”). An expanding debate ensued. It was stirred by the rejection of the idea by the then APNU+AFC regime.
From August 2018 until now the suggestion has been referred to by many names the most popular being, “oil grant,” cash transfer from oil revenue,” “cash payout from oil,” “oil money payout.” Each person in favour or against has never used the words, “Buxton Proposal” before to describe it.
In his last Sunday column in the Stabroek News, Dr. Thomas referred to his advocacy as the “Buxton Proposal.” I never saw anyone referred to the oil cash transfer idea as the Buxton proposal. I had set about an exhaustive Google research on the debate. I couldn’t find any person who labelled the suggestion as the Buxton Proposal.
There are things in life that don’t make sense. If you go to Leguan, and in your speech you suggest the renaming of the capital, the issue is the “capital renaming suggestion.” How could it be the Leonora proposal? If you go to Enmore to make an address and advised that the government privatise UG, then the ensuing debate is the “privatisation of UG proposal.” By what logic would you name it the Enmore proposal? It is not the place where the delivery occurred but the central issue, the subject, the idea. The name therefore, should contain the idea.
Why did Thomas, and Thomas alone, give it that title? He knows the title is pregnant with political meaning. He links the oil money disbursement issue with Buxton to invest it with political clothes. But there is more than that. There is a subliminal residue lurking dangerously in the Buxton Proposal. I would opine that Thomas used the appellation “Buxton Proposal” to generate a sense of ethnic belonging. This is the route the remnants of the WPA have long gone into.
If you look at every, and I mean every, WPA remnant who is African, there isn’t even a vague reference to multi-racial politics. The two high profile Indians in the carcass of the WPA – Rupert Roopnaraine and Moses Bhagwan – write and say nothing about the political narratives in this country.
It may be correct to say that they are gone from the political landscape of this country – a loss that the young population should not regret because they were both massive disappointments to the young ones who are in need of an expansive education into the multi-racial struggle for freedom and justice.
Thomas has been a colossal disappointment for me. I will never see him the way I did when I was a radical youth. That such a fine revolutionary icon with tremendous scholarly endowment could morph into an ethnic activist is beyond belief. I have done about 10 pieces on Thomas since he acquired state power in the 2015 election as part of APNU.
The one column that I would like to remind readers of is Tuesday, February 19, 2018, titled, “Clive Thomas: Transformation into dependency.” Here is what I wrote back then: “As a growing activist, I never cared for Fitzpatrick, Roopnarine and de Caires; serious elitists that were proud to belong to bourgeois society. But I did care for and admire Clive Thomas. I did not have even a modicum of surprise of what Fitzpatrick, de Caires and Roopnarine turned out to be. But Clive Thomas has been a soulful disappointment to me and has left me with a tinge of philosophical sadness.”
I saw Thomas recently lambasting the economy under President Ali and I say with deep honesty, I was incensed and disgusted. Why not write and speak on the economy of your own government when you were in power? Here is my principled argument against Thomas.
Write and speak on it as a matter of obligation whether what you have to deliver is positive or negative but write and talk about your government’s achievements or lack of. You have a moral obligation to do so. The country would understand that if, like Dr. Roopnaraine, you are no longer part of Guyana’s political discourse. But Thomas is. He writes a weekly column. He participates in two online programmes based in Buxton. He needs to express his thoughts on the five years he and his party, the WPA, were part of the Government of Guyana.

(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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