Excuse me again, Mr. Felix,
your slip is showing again, sir

 

At the time of going to press, Commissioner of Police, Winston Felix, has not returned my call. It could be that he was unable to do so because of exigent circumstances.

 

I regret that I couldn't ascertain his feelings on information I received from reliable sources to the effect that at a meeting, Mr. Felix expressed diminished optimism about the potential of the Guyana Police Force to eliminate the threat Buxton poses to national stability.

My source remarked that after voicing that observation, Mr. Felix chose not to offer an explanation on why the police force lacks a defining strategy for Buxton.

I hope if Mr. Felix reads this, he would get back to me for a discussion on what resources the police would need to execute the death blow to the nihilist gunmen in Buxton.

I would be glad to devote one of my columns to our dialogue, with the specific intention of putting forward a case for the police.

My understanding is that Mr. Felix proceeds shortly on pre-retirement leave. If that is so, it would leave a void in his long contribution to the police force.

Any commissioner would like to bring closure to Buxton. It would be the moment of glory in their career. I would truly like to hear Mr. Felix expand on the topic of the insurmountability of the Buxton predicament.

What had he in mind when he showed a pessimistic face about police success in Buxton at that meeting?

How interesting that I heard this attitude about Mr. Felix, just two days before Dale Andrews did his eye-opener on the danger Buxton poses to the forthcoming national election.

Dale told me that when he got the scoop from the former Target Squad member, the last thing on his mind was the political implications his news story would have.

He suggested that even though what he was reporting would raise eye-brows about certain political figures, his role as a journalist was to report the facts.

I have news for Dale. Many dimensions of his reporting were covered in my series on the Buxton conspiracy for the Kaieteur News and the Chronicle.

I did a total of sixteen articles that documented the role of politics in the criminal debauchery of Buxton, and the confluence of criminality and politics in that tragic village that the WPA and Eusi Kwayana, through decades of dogged political work, helped to shape as one of the most remarkably politicized villages in the entire country.

People may not know it, but during Rodney's groundings, Buxton became a paragon of multi-racial consciousness.

African Buxtonians marched in emotional embrace with Indians from Annandale during the great period of Rodney's charisma.

Someone with the unique praxis of David Hinds was a product of that epoch. It must have psychologically devastated Eusi Kwayana to see who have taken over Buxton, and the bestial marauders who kill with pleasure, using politics as a disguise for their insane criminality.

But why is the tragedy of Buxton a political, cultural and personal crisis for Eusi Kwayana only?

I mean, we can sympathize and empathize with him. He gave the greater part of his life to Buxton. We cannot begin to imagine how he feels, when an Indian can die any moment from an AK 47 carried by a sixteen-year-old Buxtonian youth trained to kill by people who are not from Buxton, and who are literally ignorant of the history of the village and Guyanese politics.

But the insanity of Buxton is a Shakespearean lament in the life of many of us who fought alongside people in the WPA, who are now supporters of the criminal venture in Buxton.

One of them has direct contact with the extremist teachers. Another is an eminent Guyanese scholar and comrade of Walter Rodney.

I don't agree entirely with the analysis of what the ex-Target Squad officer told Dale, about how the politics of the movement got overthrown by the criminal lust for wealth by the five escapees.

My intelligence gathered over the 18-month period, led me to a different direction. This is where the Police Commissioner's diluted optimism is relevant.

We must be careful when we seek to interpret what the Commissioner meant, when he predicted a lack of successes in extirpating the criminal cancer of Buxton.

Does he mean that the Guyana Police Force simply does not have the physical and technological resources to exorcise the criminal sarcoma from Buxton?

Or is he trying to tell the audience to whom he spoke at that meeting, that the political nuance to the Buxton conspiracy defies logic, and is the factor that makes the situation intractable?

But exactly how many dimensions of politics do we have in Buxton? Which one of these parallels was he referring to?

There are two types of political factors that make Buxton a formidable force to confront. The first angle is the extremist involvement.

These are people with access to a certain television channel, namely Channel 9 and a political party and a cultural organization, the PNCR and ACDA respectively.

The extremist fringe, (which certainly included Philip Bynoe, and his particular partner who has been arrested) has ongoing contacts with a number of important politicized organizations in Guyana.

Guns came from Suriname and the burnt down GDF site on the Linden highway, Camp Groomes. Guns are still pouring in to Buxton, arranged by, at least, two well known former GDF personnel.

A prominent politician secures recruits from the West Coast and Mocha on the East Bank.

Dale Andrews mentioned a recognized city lawyer, who was the central figure in the Mash Day jailbreak. Most of us who investigated the Buxton conspiracy, know about another lawyer who had extensive contacts with Dale Moore. Both of these lawyers should start paying their taxes.

One is certain that these kinds of intelligence data are available to Commissioner Felix, and this could have motivated his pessimistic opinion on Buxton.

But there is another take on the politics of Buxton; this time from an unusual perspective.

It should be considered a distinct possibility that the PPP may want to prolong Buxton indefinitely, because Buxton hold the trump card for that party that has almost nothing else going for it, after 13 years in power.

Buxton reminds every Indian that there is a race problem in Guyana in which Indians are being killed with impunity.

No one could do anything about it ,except the PPP which is in Government. The PPP acting on this insecurity, then asks for a chance to finally deal with Buxton.

This is likely to be a scenario in the forthcoming election.

Mr. Felix may have been a bit awkward

 

Thursday 06-09-2005