…and PNC garrison politics
Some folks wondered why the PNC had spent $40 million to purchase and distribute tickets for their supporters to attend the Buju Banton concert at the National Stadium as part of the “Independence Carnival”. After all, when the PPP had also supported some concerts while in office, the PNC had trenchantly criticised them for pandering to the lowest common denominator in THEIR constituency! Or is it okay for the PNC to pander, ‘cause the PPP’s pandering might be tainted with poaching?
But the dancehall artiste of “Boom bye bye” notoriety, who’d segued back to reggae, made a statement during his show that’ll have the PNC pulling their hair out. Introducing his song “Mr 9”, Banton croaked in his deeply accented Jamaican patois: “A lot of things have happened in Guyana. A lot of folks I know are no longer in Guyana. Some are alive but they are still not here. Big up, Roger Khan. Big up, meh bredren, Trini. Nuff youths drop out.”
Yes, that’s right! The man who just came out of a US prison after serving 8 years of his 10-year sentence for drug smuggling actually ‘bigged up’ Roger Khan, whom the PNC has made out to be Public Enemy # 2 — Number 1 being Jagdeo, of course!! – for taking out all those bandits back in the days of the “Buxton Resistance”!!
But, really, if you think about it, the PNC shouldn’t be surprised by this ‘shout out’. Buju Banton’s a product of the “garrison” culture of the Kingston ghetto. Those neighbourhoods are controlled by “Dons”, who run all sorts of criminal enterprises and literally hold the power of life and death over the residents via heavily armed gangs and corrupt Police and politicians. When Banton had last visited Guyana, back in 2006, Khan was at the fag-end of being the biggest Don in Guyana, and related to him positively.
Khan had taken out an ad in the papers, declaring: “Myself and the Commissioner of Police were close personal friends for over four (4) years. Because of the fact that we could not see eye-to-eye with each other on matters of public concern, we parted company and my friends became his enemies. I am willing to answer any questions relating to my relationship with Winston Felix in a Commission of Inquiry under oath and even under a polygraph test. Is Winston Felix prepared to do the same thing?”
So here we have the PNC’s Broomes extending Banton’s “Long Walk to Freedom” tour by taking him into the ghettoes of G/town. Why? To import garrison politics??
Over in Jamaica, Rupert Lewis, the Marcus Garvey scholar, had slammed Banton for appropriating the title of Nelson Mandela’s biography.
Mandela’s imprisonment was for the people, not drugs.
…and education
One organisation working in our Indigenous Peoples’ community proposed that the present school curriculum isn’t appropriate for their constituency. Their spokesman opined that the kinds of opportunities available in the hinterland make technical and vocational education and training (TVET) more appropriate for the farming, fishing and mining jobs available. And he asked what’s the use of an “English and Maths”-based curriculum.
Now, while this may sound reasonable, it’s quite oblivious to our history, and is grounded in “presentism” – the doctrine that conditions existing in the present will continue ad infinitum. We saw this after the abolition of slavery, when the new educational system was confined to the “Three Rs”: reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmatic”. What would the freed slaves do with studies in engineering and such like??
But just as happened then — but now at an exponential rate — “the times are a changing”!! Guyana’s on the cusp of receiving some real money that should enable our entire country to become one where there’s no “hinterland”.
Why should the Indigenous Peoples lock themselves out?? That’s slackness!!
…in reporting
Some media and a host of PNC supporters are in spin control mode, and have doctored Buju Banton’s “bigging up” of Roger Khan to make it appear he was delivering a homily on choir boys!!
Bring out the halo!!
