Facing a somewhat hostile reception last evening in Buxton, senior PPP/C member Gail Teixeira expressed remorse at the crime spree that gripped the village a few years ago and called on villagers to ensure that it is never repeated in Guyana.
“We regret what happened in Buxton and we say here on the PPP/C platform that… what happened in Buxton must never ever, ever, ever again happen in Buxton or any other part of Guyana,” Teixeira said. “We as a people must make sure that it never, ever, ever happens again,” she declared to some vocal support from the audience. She said that through dialogue the PPP/C was able to reach out and help “reconstruct a village whose soul had been tormented”.
She was addressing a gathering of about 300-400 people as the PPP/C took its campaign to the East Coast Demerara village where it was greeted by animated supporters of opposition coalition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). Although relatively docile at first the crowd became increasingly animated as the evening wore on. The action intensified when a member of the crowd began distributing APNU posters and flyers to those gathered. Soon several persons on bicycles and on foot began running through the gathering with posters and placards heckling. At one point the heckling and noise became so much that Prime Minister Sam Hinds even pleaded: “Give us a hearing. You may not like us but give us a hearing”.
Teixeira, who addressed the gathering at a time when the atmosphere was relatively calm, made a special appeal to women who she said represented 50 percent of the voters. The PPP/C government, she said, was making it possible for ordinary women to own their own houses thus empowering them. “So when the men raise they hand and ah beat dem [the women] deh could throw deh so and so out the house because they own the house, they don’t have to run anymore,” she said.
“Go into the community as a disciple of Donald Ramotar and the PPP and preach the word of development,” former PNCR member Joseph Hamilton charged. “Vote not for race but for programmes and plans,” he urged. He also said that the party should be voted in because it consisted of “roots people” and not middle class persons such as AFC member Nigel Hughes.
“Our salvation does not lie in the APNU, nor does it lie in the AFC, our salvation continues to lie in the PPP,” Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee declared, when it was his turn to speak. He elaborated on the challenges of being in government and the progress that the PPP/C has made assuming office but soon found it difficult to compete with the vocal crowd. After the chants of “Granger” intensified, Rohee was left with no choice but to call for the music. And for the next few minutes it was ‘DJ Rohee’ on the platform belting out the lyrics to the party’s campaign songs. It soon became a shouting match between the APNU poster-bearing supporters and the supporters from the PPP/C, some of whom were wearing party t-shirts and waving flags. The few police there at the time attempted to maintain order.
After a while a large section of the crowd began running east along the Railway Embankment road when a rumour spread that APNU presidential candidate David Granger was nearby. But the crowd soon returned after there was no Granger to greet them. However, by the time they came back there was an additional police presence on the scene and the crowd for the most part complied with the officers.
Hinds, in the temporary absence of the vocal APNU supporters, said that people have made false accusations against the government including a charge that the government was not treating blacks and black communities fairly. He rejected this and said that this is being spread by foreigners and other persons who want to separate Guyanese. He also sought to dispel the notion that the government was treating the sugar industry more favourably than the bauxite industry.
In urging the crowd to listen to the message of the PPP/C, former WPA member Lennox ‘Mboya’ Wood called on Buxton to see him as a “bridge” between the community and the PPP/C. “I stand here as a bridge. I stand here as your representative to reach out to the PPP to get whatever you want,” he said. Wood indicated that he was instrumental in the visit that President Bharrat Jagdeo made to the community last year August and said that all of the promises made by the Head of State on that occasion have been fulfilled.
PPP/C presidential candidate Donald Ramotar told the gathering that elections were about records and he said the PPP’s record ought to be compared with that of the PNC. He said that the PPP/C has been able to transform Guyana’s economy. He also said that the country was now on the brink of universal secondary education. Ramotar told the crowd that the freedom under the PPP/C government was something that could not be priced. Just as Ramotar was finishing off his address, a few rotten eggs were thrown into the crowd causing a few of the APNU supporters to flee.
The chairperson of the rally was presidential advisor Odinga Lumumba, who was born in Buxton. He urged Buxton to partner with the PPP and join him as “another great Buxtonian”.
