Dear Editor,
WELL, it is ‘belly wuk’ time at the Georgetown municipality as they say here in Guyana. Now that sales have dropped at the travel agencies around City Hall, with the ‘King and Queen’ and their entourage having to cut back on their constant official travels with money no longer ‘deh dora dora’, it is logical to assume that business must have skyrocketed at the nearby pharmacies for Kaopectate, Pepto-Bismol, Imodium A-D and other antidiarrhoeal medications, and bathroom tissue.

Dem latrine at City Hall full, full, full. With the headlines screaming in one newspaper ‘Criminal charges recommended against top city officials,’ couple well persons there ‘ginching’ and ‘deh pon plimpla’. People no longer doing things ‘braddar’. Some officers stop driving their fancy SUVs to work and catching bus instead.

The big question is, ‘What does Santa Kennard have in his bag of goodies for them?’ Will they be reporting shortly to SOCU headquarters rather than to the grand old fairytale building as old and dilapidated as it is?
There have been quite a few scandals at City Hall before, but this is the Grand Daddy of them all. Never before has there been so much greed, vice, corruption, arrogance and venality. There had to be a day of reckoning coming there. Then all of the nieces, nephews, daughters-in-law, cousins, girlfriends of the ‘Tin Gods’ there must be wondering if their ‘dance done’, as they know that they were only featherbedding and destroying the finances of council whilst doing nothing productive.

It is the hope of the citizenry that a full audit of the finances of the council for the years gone by, will be ordered by the commission, as it is clear that what was uncovered by the inquiry is merely the tip of the iceberg. ‘Hint to Baniba mek Quashiba tek notice’. And will the investigation be widened to outside of Guyana, to where large sums of money have been transferred, properties acquired and businesses invested in? Will there be a proper investigation into the parking meter scandal?

But one wonders if only the intractable officers will be dealt with for their misdeeds, or whether the reprobate councillors who were the policy-makers, who knowingly condoned the many wrongdoings, who served on the Finance Committee and signed approving vouchers totalling billions of dollars for contractors who were unfit, for excessive travel, for goods that did not go through the tender process, and who personally added to the nepotism, cronyism and favouritism at City Hall will also be dealt with? To add insult to injury, some of these very persons have been re-elected to serve on the new Finance Committee. How could this be? Do we want a continuation of the financial malfeasance that has existed over the last three years? It will be the same persons holding the purse strings of the city. So sad!

Everyone had been hoping that when rotten apples are removed from the barrel, there would have been a new day at City Hall? But it seems as though the council will never learn from its mistakes. Making the same mistakes, over and over again, is a source of unremitting pleasure for the Fathers and Mothers of our capital city.

Regards
Kwasi Sanderson