A few weeks before the last local government elections, a longstanding Baronian friend with whom I use to roam the streets of London before he took off to film school and I to university, and whose late mother was born in Beterverwagting (BV), informed me that the family would prepare a plot of land it owns in the village and offer it to the BV/Triumph Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) for use as a small community park. He had arranged a meeting with the chairperson, Mr. Leyland Harcourt, to make the offer, and on one of my visits to BV, I mentioned this to some villagers. Almost to a person, they said that I should discourage my friend and his family from giving the land to the council as it was too corrupt, that the land would never get to the people and that the chairperson was a fully-fledged PPP/C collaborator who has done very little, and most of that in Indian areas.
BV/Triumph is a multi-ethnic NDC of about 5000 persons: 46% Africans who are dominant in BV and 43% Indians mainly in Triumph. BV is a traditional stronghold of the PNC, as Triumph is of the PPP. At the local government elections of 2016, Harcourt, who is also a Muslim Imam, headed a group called the 8th of May Movement (8MM) that forced APNU not to participate in the election. The 8MM took 12 of the 18 available seats (one went to an independent candidate Jimmaul Baggot), leaving the remaining 5 for the PPP/C. Writing just after those elections, I said, ‘Whatever 8MM does, its focus will have to also be on local political cohesion, for it has hardly taken office and there are already predictions coming from the PNC old guards of its impending doom’ (SN:22/05/2016).
