Dear Editor,
IT IS disingenuous, unkind and misleading for Mayor Patricia Chase-Green to say that, under the city’s by-laws, there is no provision for the Council to provide a vehicle to be designated to the deputy mayor, and that during her tenure as deputy mayor she was never issued a vehicle.There is no city by-law that deals with the amenities and/or resources to be provided to the mayor or deputy mayor. These are merely the trappings of these offices that were provided over time, and therefore the more ingenuous thing that she should have done was to give the history of this matter.

In 1996, when then PPP/C Councillor Mrs. Philomena Sahoye-Shury, otherwise known as ‘Fireball’, held the office of the Deputy Mayor of Georgetown, she was forced to seek redress in the High Court after the then Opposition-dominated Council forcefully removed amenities which were constitutionally accorded to her office.

The People’s National Congress/Good and Green for Georgetown, now referred to as A Partnership for National Unity, had used its majority to pass a no-confidence motion against Shury simply because she had become the acting mayor after then Mayor Ranwell Jordan had been out of the country attending a conference in Istanbul.

They passed a motion causing Shury to lose her secretary, a vehicle and driver, and security guards for her residence. The GGG/PNC officials also boycotted all meetings she called during that period.

Persons should remember that, back then, under an accord between the major parties in the Council, it was agreed that every side would support the other’s candidate for mayor for one year during the Council’s three-year mandate. GGG leader Hamilton Green had served as mayor during the first year, in keeping with his party’s majority on the M&CC. The PNC’s Jordan was supported by the PPP/Civic against Green the next year. It was expected that Sahoye-Shury would become mayor the following year (1996), but the GGG and PNC then combined their numbers to prevent this from taking place.

Mayor Chase-Green then selectively says — regarding the issue of security not being provided at the residence of Deputy Mayor Sherod Duncan — that since the deputy mayor does not own the property on which he currently resides, permission would have to be granted by the landlord.

The motion that was passed in 1996 forcefully removed all the amenities which were constitutionally accorded to the Deputy Mayor’s Office, not some; and included the guards at the person’s residence, so it could not be at the discretion of the Mayor or the Town Clerk or the Council to discern which of those amenities could be patronizingly given back to the holder of that office.

All that needs to be done is to have a motion passed overturning that evil, depraved and dreadful one that was passed twenty years ago to spite and miniaturize Mrs. Philomena Sahoye-Shury. It is not a law, but merely a motion; that is: a formal proposal made by a member of a deliberative assembly so that the assembly could take certain action, which could be corrected by the passage of another motion that is ethical, principled and honourable.

JERMAIN JOHNSON