Present M&CC lacks the wherewithal to transform Georgetown

Dear Editor
WHEN the Minister of Communities announced that local government elections would have been conducted on March 18, last year I, like many other Guyanese, considered it to be a historic occasion. Here we had the opportunity after 22 long years, to remove those tired, old, incompetent, mentally bankrupt and some very corrupt municipal officials, who had long overstayed their welcome and replace them with young, energetic, honest, bright, caring councillors to manage our towns and neighbourhoods of Guyana.
Remember the entire local government system was considered rotten and in dire need of rehabilitation to be made fully functional, as we all believed that local government is about handing decision-making power to the people to enable them to efficiently and effectively manage their communities.

We looked with anticipation to those younger candidates, and others, who entered the fray for the first time, as there is no better nursery for leadership than Local Government. It is in this arena that future leaders get opportunities to acquaint themselves with the proverbial nuts and bolts of representative governance.
Alas! One year on we have come to realise that this thinking was irrational, as it failed on several grounds. If we look at Georgetown since those elections rather than getting better, things have instead gotten much worse.
The first sad reality was that the independent candidates who had the courage to enter the fray were forced to compete against the established political parties. This made their efforts next to impossible, as they had to try to overcome the various parties’ well-oiled and well-funded machineries. Most of them failed, resulting in quite a few of those same tired, dim, and crooked old councillors returning to carry on their old ways. Just look at the ‘Fantastic Four’ and the bizarre parking meter contract in Georgetown.
The second reality is that the new Georgetown City Council is just as ineffective and really just a talk shop just like the last one. There is very little they can or are willing to do to rein in corrupt, lazy and inept officers who make rings around them and who clearly have political godfathers and godmothers above the councillors and who cannot be touched. It is once again a place where “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” One senior municipal officer has moved from being totally bankrupt during the life of the last Council where his car was seized and his home foreclosed upon by his bankers for non-payment to now just a year on, owning several homes and multiple luxury vehicles. Where are SARA and SOCU?
The third reality is that this present City Council of Georgetown lacks the wherewithal to transform Georgetown into a superior place to live and work, and seem happy to just maintain its present status quo. All in all, nothing has changed as citizens had hoped for with this new Council, as the Georgetown municipality continues to be well known for financial mismanagement, rampant nepotism favouritism and, cronyism, clientelism, which are all acceptable and expected ways of conducting municipal affairs and business at City Hall.
Regards

Mateo Phelephe

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