Dear Editor,

Is the former Deputy Mayor Sherod Duncan the only sane, morally upright and decent person left at City Hall? What has happened to the 29 other councillors who sit around the horseshoe table and who witness the madness close up? And do nothing? To those 29 other councillors I encourage you to read the book ‘Lessons on Leadership by Terror: Finding Shaka Zulu in the Attic’

Citizens of Georgetown and indeed Guyanese from all walks of life are united and fed up with the bullyism, the incompetence and the scandals that have rocked the Georgetown municipality for the last two and a half years. Yet the man at the centre of it all, the Town Clerk of Georgetown continues to sit firmly in place, apparently waiting out the two years more that he has to retirement during which time more mayhem and havoc will wreak the capital of Guyana.

From the secret trips abroad from China, to Mexico to the Mediterranean and many other continents which brought nothing but the misery of the parking meters on motorists in Georgetown, to the plan to name a street in Guyana’s capital Georgetown, after China, to the filling of their pockets with perdiems. It seems that travelling is the priority at City Hall, even if it is to enjoy the Trinidad Carnival.

There is the nasty scandal of a lance corporal who is accused of having sex with a “detained male juvenile” at the City Hall, and which the Town Clerk did not report to the police, the Child Protection Agency, or the parents of the juvenile until months after. This indeed was nothing more than a failed but massive attempt at a cover up by the administration of this gross wrongdoing. The slaughter of a citizen who was being detained by the City Police, [in the case], this chief administrative officer bailed the errant constable for nearly a million dollars and on top of that provided expensive legal services to him, all at the expense of the citizenry without the Council’s prior knowledge or approval.
I have to agree with the Guyanese social activist and artist, Mark Jacobs, when he said that “The Mayor and City Council of Georgetown is a cesspool of lawlessness and depravities of the lowest order”.  Hardly a week passes without this Georgetown City Council not finding itself in the throes of a scandal. In fact, on most occasions, one scandal erupts even before the previous one subsides.

Of course right before us now is the destruction of the green space earmarked as the Bel Air Park playfield and the Farnum Playground which was gifted by the Farnum family to provide recreational facilities for the people, and particularly the children of Subryanville, Kitty and Campbellville and which a large part of it has been handed over to a commercial venture for their exclusive use. All these are the doings of the imperial overlord, the Town Clerk of Georgetown.

City Councilliors, as Mr. Duncan puts forward his no confidence motion against the Town Clerk, I ask that you support him and be reminded of a poem called “First they came …” which was written by German Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) and which was about the cowardice of German intellectuals, following the Nazis’ rise to power and subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group. It goes like this:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me
As city fathers and mothers, please help to save our capital city.
Regards,
Riley Matthews