Nocturnal conversation with Selwyn Pieters on the seawall

Jul 07, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I was with my dog on the seawall on Tuesday evening, when prominent attorney, Selwyn Pieters, passed by. He stopped and reminded me of two things. The very day was his anniversary of being accepted to practice law in Guyana and that same day marked 10 years since he first met me at his call-to-the bar ceremony.

He asked me if I can recall that day, I said no. He smiled and told me I am getting old. I think he is right. We walked to the spot where my dog was sitting and Selwyn asked me to comment on my position of Indians being vulnerable which he said he read in my column on the Mon Repos violence.

My response was that since 1992, there has been a concatenation of violent mayhems against Indians thus there exists the question of Indian victimhood in this country. Selwyn then inquired about the possibility of the agent provocateur factor. I rejected that with an explanation.

First, I opined that the infiltration theory was an automatic response by African leaders to mask the national embarrassment they faced. Secondly, more than a dozen attackers were involved. I pointed out that in a thinly populated society like Guyana, it was not possible for PPP actors to pay more than a dozen infiltrators and all have since been tight-lipped.

Then I described what my investigation into the Buxton killings of 2002-2006 revealed. Many youths were killed by extra-judicial squads because they would inform their friends that they were doing work for the gunmen and the pay was plenty. Their friends would tell other friends and eventually word got back to villagers and the police and extra-judicial groups ended up with the information.

This is a small population where everyone knows everyone and somewhere along the line, information becomes public knowledge. One Saturday morning during the Buxton madness, I was at the Banks DIH outlet at Bar and Alexander Streets in Kitty when I ran into one of the youths in Wortmanville/Werk-en-Rust who lived not far from my mother-in-law’s supermarket.

I didn’t see him in ages. When I enquired about him, he told me about Buxton and how he got involved. I got solid information from him. This is how secrets are impossible to bury in small populated countries. Do you know how Glenn Lall came to know that a man named Oswald Griffith threw that miasmic substance on me? (For the umpteenth times, it was not faeces. It was Adam Harris who jokingly printed that in KN and it has since stuck).

Griffith told his cousin that he did it when he read it in the newspapers. His cousin was annoyed with him because the cousin told him that Glenn was nice to him when Glenn had a shoe store in Stabroek Market.

He told his cousin he was sorry and he confessed to Glenn in the presence of Adam about the persons who paid him. Griffith was killed mysteriously days before he was to testify at the trial of Kwame McCoy, Jason Abdulla and Shawn Hinds who were charged for assaulting me. A car smashed into him on the Railway Embankment not too far from where I lived late one night. I always believe that there was some eerie meaning of the murder occurring not too far from my home.

The point about the conversation at the Banks DIH outlet and the Oswald Griffith confession is that in Guyana, everybody knows everybody. It is not possible for PPP actors to pay more than a dozen agents provocateurs to beat up the vendors to blame it on the PNC and they have all kept silent so far.

One of those attackers had to open his mouth by now. That is how the lumpen elements behave. When they take their money and go sporting, they will mouth off about their paymasters. They do not do it deliberately. Rather it is an act of naivety. They simply like to talk and they feel no obligation to their paymasters.

Oswald Griffith in his confessions to Glenn did not show any obligation to the persons who planned the attack on me. He simply told Glenn everything. Had he lived to testify, the scandal would have made headlines in both the regional and international press.

In conclusion, it is up to the PNC leaders to do their intelligence tasks and come up with at least one of the attackers who will confess as to who paid him. That certainly will not happen. The answer is simple. Many of the protestors wanted to attack Indians. I did tell Selwyn that the PNC could have shaped the protest to win hearts and minds. Instead, it did the opposite.

(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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