By Clifford Stanley

THE  stand-off between the Regional Chairman of the Regional Democratic Council of Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice) and the APNU+AFC regional councillors  entered its seventh month yesterday, apparently with no end  in sight.Yesterday’s attempt at a statutory meeting of the council  deteriorated into an impromptu cultural show even before  the meeting  began,  with APNU+AFC councillors pounding their fists and objects on the desks and breaking into folk songs  every time Regional Chairman Vickchand Ramphal attempted to speak.

Ramphal’s pleas for order were consistently ignored by the dissenting  councillors, who insisted that they would never give him a hearing until he apologises for boycotting a function in his region in which President David Granger had participated.
DANCING
During the ensuing debacle, one prominent APNU councillor abandoned her seat and took to dancing to folk songs belted out by her colleagues.

The event  causing the conflict occurred in January last  when  President Granger visited the region and  handed over two buses to be used in Region Five for transporting children to and from school.

The event took place at Fort Wellington in close proximity to Ramphal’s office, but he was absent from the ceremony. He later said that he had not  presented himself at the ceremony  because he had not been invited.

The APNU+AFC councillors, however,  said that he had deliberately  boycotted the function, showing disrespect to the President  and they called on him to apologise.

Since January to date, Ramphal has refused to apologise and all the statutory meetings of the RDC had to be aborted because of the protest actions by the APNU+AFC councillors.
NEW DIMENSION
On Thursday  some APNU+AFC councillors said that a new dimension of the conflict  was that the PPP/C councillors had recently  gone ahead and held a statutory meeting without them;  had prepared minutes of that meeting signed by the regional vice-chairman  instead of the Clerk of the Council and were trying to distribute  those minutes  as official documents of the RDC.

An additional demand was that these “bogus minutes” be withdrawn and the apology offered before the council could proceed with its business.

Ramphal ignored those demands and maintained that  there was no need for an apology nor withdrawal of the controversial minutes.

Meanwhile, after some 90 minutes of disruptions of the meeting, the new Regional Executive Officer of the region, Ovid Morrison   and his recording staff withdrew,  citing the obvious lack of progress towards order.

Observers of the impasse expressed the view that Ramphal may be inclined to offer some kind of apology, but was being blocked from doing so by his political superiors in the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C). In the meantime, they said the impasse  will continue  with no immediate end in sight.