By Gokarran Sukhdeo

I was in Guyana for three weeks when two eventful bombshells were dropped indicting certain ministries of the government. My attempt to find out more about one spurious remigration entitlement was unsuccessful. I started out with the remigration officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Unfortunately, she became sick and went home for two weeks, locking her office and taking the keys with her, and, as she was descending the stairs to commence her sick leave, told me in no uncertain terms, that she was the only one in the country who did her work.

The second bombshell was dropped on the Minister of Home Affairs. It turned out to be a hot-air bomb blown up by an ex-con who probably hopes to con the US into granting him political asylum, in collaboration with ten to twelve dissidents and political aspirants (at least one with an equally shady past) picketing the Minister's office, in company of a few reckless TV and newspaper personnel. The rest of the country, I personally observed, was unconcerned, and enjoyed relative peace and a racial harmony through economic and social interactions, a harmony that I had not seen in perhaps thirty years. I am left to wonder if this second bombshell was not all pageantry, carefully scripted and currently enacted to serve as an election gimmick. No wonder when challenged to produce evidence they backed down just like the bunch of hypocrites whom Jesus told, "He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone."

In my opinion this bombshell is not dissimilar nor is disconnected to the pageantry that is being orchestrated at Buxton. I believe the jailbreak, the burning down of portions of Georgetown, the storming of the Office of the President, the lawlessness at Buxton are all elements of a Master Plan hatched at the same place where the X-13 plan was developed.

To find out more about Buxton, one day during my vacation, my journalistic curiosity and enthusiasm prompted me to drive on the embankment road through Buxton. Unknowing to me, the day before, a rider and his pillion, passing through the same road were shot, and the rider killed. And two days later another person riding through this road was shot, fortunately not killed. In Buxton the lives of innocent commuters are still as cheap as PNC's hot air.

As my family and I approached the section where the trenches across the road were repaired, two groups of young men, about twenty in all, ostensibly started to converge from opposite sides of the road towards the middle, in front of my car. Fortunately, either because I was driving too fast, or these (goodly well-intentioned) 'freedom fighters' were taken by surprise by the boldness of a strange vehicle violating their territorial integrity without visa, I passed through without harm. In the car, my wife, mother-in-law, and son were visible shaken.

The bottom line is, criminality is very much alive, though a little cautious on account of "phantom" activities, and waiting like a viper to strike without notice once the threat of the phantoms is removed. From observations and discussions this criminality, I am convinced, is artificially kept alive, and takes its cues either directly or indirectly from pronouncements of the PNC. For the Buxton pageant to continue, it was necessary for this other pageant to be staged. In other words Buxton will again explode once Mr. Corbin, his small bunch of dissidents and other mischief makers score a success in the "phantom gang" fiasco.

Criminality in Buxton did not become dormant as a result of traditional police work, but by the employment of untraditional Machiavellian methods. Certain fires, depending on their origin, cannot be extinguished (traditionally) with water. Because of the social dynamics surrounding the law-enforcing institutions and the origin of the criminality in Buxton there is, arguably, justification for the employment of untraditional Machiavellian methodology. After all, social justice must be distinguished from criminal justice, and, I believe justice must be the handmaid of society, and not the other way round – a concept Guyana Human Rights Society has difficulty comprehending. In short, if anarchy is an imminent threat and the greater good of society is to be served, then the end justifies the means. (This is basically what Machiavellianism is all about.) The history of human society is a record of the dialectical (tentative) surrendering of certain individual and small-group rights for the preservation of the whole. In Nature, a similar dialectic also prevails. When I was in Guyana it rained incessantly for eight days. During the floods that followed, I noticed the ants, thousands, perhaps millions, coming together to form a large ball floating to some secure place where they could restart their society. Obviously, the ants at the bottom of the ball perished as they gave up their individual rights to life and living so their species might be protected and preserved.

Criminality in Buxton did not happen overnight as a static phenomenon. I have always disputed that this criminality did not start with the escape of the five prisoners. There is a deeper sociological aspect to it. It developed out of an anomie caused by the vacuum left when the WPA died, the failure of the PPP, when it came into power, to effectively fill that void, and the opportunistic efforts of the PNC to capitalize on that anomie. The 'escape' therefore was not the origin of the criminality, but one part of a bigger plan. A previous plan to re-activate X-13, in the aftermath of the last general elections, failed mainly because the subjective conditions had changed between the 1960s and late 1990s. The X-13 was devised to cause serious racial divisions through widespread arson and the picking off of a few Indians. But this time, only a few people, and not the whole population fell for it as the two major races were now aware that racial (economic and social) cooperation, rather than racial divisiveness, was critical to the survival of each race.

What is happening now is simply terrorism, defined by the FBI as any form of criminality that (a) terrifies large sections of the population, and (b) has a political/religious agenda, or takes directives from political/religious sources. I hope the US Embassy takes note.

If my theory of the origin and definition of this Buxton criminality is right, then it explains why traditional police work failed to contain it, and will continue to fail even with massive inputs of capital or any form of racial restructuring of the Force. In my opinion, similar to America's approach to terrorism, the use of Machiavellian tactics is justified, because the criminality in Guyana has a definite terrorist characteristic to it. Further, if PNC leader Mr. Corbin is serious about the resignation of Home Affairs Minister Mr. Gajraj, then he, Mr. Corbin, should first step down. He has no moral right to lead any political party with a dubious past when he was a Minister of the PNC government. I know. I can feel the echo of the accusation against him. I was there that Saturday morning as an Economist with the Ministry of Agriculture when he was singled out for alleged misconduct.

Mr. Corbin and his small group of instigators, and other political outbidders must indeed be peeved that their "freedom fighters" are being decimated by "phantoms". This is social justice and more. It is eternal justice. They that lived by violence died by it. It’s a spiritual law. And this also will be the fate of all else who directly or indirectly, latently or manifestly advocate violence against innocent commuters through Buxton and helpless women and children in the neighboring villages surrounding Buxton. So shall it be. Heads, the people win – whether by social (Machiavellian) justice or eternal justice, Mr. Corbin; tails you lose!