Buxton revival
Editorial
Stabroek News
October 14, 2002
On Thursday, the PNC/R leader Mr Hoyte journeyed to Buxton to deliver an address intended to show “solidarity” with the people of the village. Several elements of his presentation warrant attention. On the crime front - the obsession and passion of all Guyanese at the moment - he uttered two incredulous statements.
The first was that he was not going to address the subject of crime as the responsibility for preventing crime and apprehending criminals rests primarily with the government. As the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the PNC/R an equally important responsibility falls on the shoulders of Mr Hoyte. He failed to use the opportunity at the epicentre of the current crime crisis - Buxton - to impress upon its law abiding citizens and the others who have gone the opposite way that law and order is the foundation of any system of administration and that the banditry that was taking place within their sight had to stop.
Secondly, his statement that Buxton is not harbouring criminals is not grounded in reality. Buxton is harbouring criminals. The best intelligence of the security services, the day-to-day horrors committed on hapless commuters and residents of neighbouring villages and the experiences of those living within Buxton attest clearly to the inaccuracy of his statement. By not using the opportunity to firmly plant the PNC/R’s flag on the side of law and order, he reinforced the concerns of many ordinary citizens that his party is ambiguous on the unrelenting wave of crime that has gripped the country and in which Buxton has featured prominently.
As has become the norm in the political arena, his address was full of harsh invective and uncompromising demands. The only way for the besieged citizen to see some glimmer of hope is to strip away the stridence of the politicians in both the PNC/R and the government and to look to the core of something promising, even if only a sliver of something.
In Mr Hoyte’s case it was the appeal for Buxton. The village, he said, needs a socio-economic transformation and the government should provide funding to the tune of $250M. It’s in keeping with the complementary role of the government in this eternal feud between the two parties that it would see the appeal - as President Jagdeo and Mr Collymore have - as an undisguised attempt by Mr Hoyte and his party to say: $250M for Buxton or no peace in the country.
Mr Hoyte himself clearly gave this hint in his address when he rattled off a list of things that needed to be done in Buxton and declared “these are the things they have to do if they want quiet and peace and contentment in the Buxton/Friendship area.”
It makes better sense for the government to take his appeal as a signal that he wants some type of rational discussion on the way forward. No-one expects that government will dole out $250M to Buxton tomorrow with the faint hope that the atrocities will end. Not at all. Development could hardly take place in Buxton or anywhere else for that matter considering the daily rampage of the criminals.
The crime wave has to be brought under control and the perpetrators have to be caught and brought to justice.
But surely Mr Hoyte’s appeal offers the kernel of hope for discussion. The government could reasonably say, as it has via an equally uncompromising response by Mr Collymore, that a development programme for Buxton predated Mr Hoyte’s intervention and that it was ongoing. Further, that over $200M has been spent in the village in the last five years and this kind of development could not be confined to Buxton but would have to encompass contiguous villages or other depressed areas. Ironically, this was being addressed by one of the committees set up by Mr Hoyte and President Jagdeo which the PNC/R has since suspended.
The government could also say that there were needier communities all across the country and Buxton should not have, and does not deserve, preferential treatment.
The point is the two sides should be talking rationally with each other on these issues. The reflexive, knee-jerk reactions on both sides must be discarded. Week after week, the politicians in both camps sit down and industriously pore over the utterances of the other side looking for the slightest offence to the other.
Invariably and inevitably they find many things. These then become the causes for unnecessary, bitter attacks on the other which take on lives of their own and spawn mini flashpoints and contrived disputes. There is simply no serious intent by either side to engage the other consistently and civilly, ignoring, or putting into context, the slights that may emanate from the other party. When will one side or both begin to realise that they are simply chattering at each other - not dealing with the gravamen of how to resolve the political stalemate and to use shared energies to tackle other dilemmas such as crime and giving impetus to the economy?
Their attitude continues even in the face of last Wednesday’s extraordinary show of disillusionment at the way both the government and the PNC/R have responded to the crime wave. The organisers of the shutdown didn’t plan it weeks in advance neither did they mobilise an army of helpers. They simply tapped the pulse of the collective disenchantment and anxiety of businessmen and ordinary citizens who responded by employing the only weapon at their disposal - staying away from their usual routines. It was a powerful message that neither the government nor the PNC/R can afford to ignore.
The politicians Guyana has inherited are frequently guilty of saying things intemperately and being afflicted by the heat of the moment. Taking everything literally will doom us to a lifetime of standing by and being outraged and huffy until we begin to forget that the difficult questions still have to be confronted. At the end of the day we all have to close out the background noise and deal with the real issues.