-PNCR
The main opposition PNCR yesterday said that the people of Buxton have not forgotten the years of neglect they suffered under the PPP/C administration.
In referring to President Bharrat Jagdeo’s visit to the East Coast Demerara community on Wednesday, the party said Buxtonians have not forgotten that it is his administration “through a systematic and centrally directed campaign that criminalised their village and had them labelled as criminals.” It added that the Jagdeo administration discriminated against this and other non-PPP support villages since the 2005 Flood, and continually refused to allocate resources for infrastructural development. “As the election season draws near, the PPP/C, as they did recently in Linden, believes that these belated interventions and allocation of funds, just before elections, will erase from the peoples’ memory the years of neglect and discrimination they have experienced under the PPP/C Administration,” the party noted in its weekly press statement.
It said that in responding to the concerns of residents about the stigma now associated with the village, Jagdeo “ought to have been ashamed when he hypocritically stated, during his visit, that “We need to collectively work at removing this perception wherever it exists.” According to the PNCR, the President seemed to have been suffering from amnesia as “he single-handedly contributed to the negative perception of that village and the stigma now associated with it. He feigns to have now awakened to the economic plight of the village, despite it was he who vetoed every proposal to place that village on a sound economic footing.” It recalled that the late leader of the PNCR Desmond Hoyte had submitted a detailed proposal as a model for the revitalisation of the economy of Buxton and other depressed East Coast Demerara villages. “The proposal was estimated at one hundred million dollars but it was rejected by President Jagdeo who claimed that the proposals amounted to the holding of the Government to ransom.” The party also said that the administration and “its cohorts” enabled the insertion of criminal and narco-funded gangs into Buxton. The village was garrisoned by the security forces and its economy further destroyed. It seems that the intention, all along, was to convert the once proud and independent people of Buxton into mendicants, dependent on hand-out from the government. The resilient people of Buxton will hold President Jagdeo to delivering on his obvious election promises, said the PNC.
It added that Jagdeo’s visit testifies to the contempt with which the administration holds the people of Buxton “whose leaders seem to be reduced to begging for the crumbs from the master’s table.” It questioned whether this is what the future holds for depressed East Coast Demerara villages and said that Buxtonians will not be easily fooled.
