Georgetown’s horrors under Mayor Green
In any normal, civilized nation, it would be difficult for what passes as an opposition-controlled City Council, with recurring alarming inconveniences and sickening contempt for the rights of citizens, to survive for any length of time.Not so in Georgetown, capital city of the Republic of Guyana, where sheer political skullduggery, notorious levels of incompetence, with a strong blend of political tribalism that thrives on race-based political disunity, combine to sustain a People’s National Congress-dominated Council under the “leadership” (sic) of Hamilton Green as Mayor. The disgraceful suffering citizens have had to endure just this past week, with floodwaters from clogged drains posing a health hazard amid torrential rain, was the latest example of why simple human decency and even minimal respect for the rights of the individual, irrespective of race or political affiliation, should have weighed heavily on Mr. Green that it is more than high time to demonstrate a modicum of remorse over his overbearing poor leadership and quit as Mayor of Georgetown. His legacy as a very poor Mayor, including controversial fiscal management and declining levels of governance that the capital city deserves, seems to have NO precedent among countries of the Caribbean Community. Despite shortcomings, their management accountability and examples of projects to improve the welfare of the people, who maintain keen interest in local government affairs, contrast with the shocking attitudes of indifference, resulting from continuing lack of any meaningful response from the Mayor and his Party-dominated City Council. The norm is for administrative rot, based on contempt for the public. And Mayor Green and his political comrades have settled to live with sustained ineffective grumblings of taxpayers that are routinely ignored by their Party, the PNC, that had so greatly abused State power for almost a quarter-century. During that “dark time”, Hamilton Green himself was quite an active player before being tamed, for a period, by the late President Desmond Hoyte. What has remained constant, despite the many millions of dollars in subsidies and other forms of assistance provided by successive administrations of the PPPC into the operations of the Georgetown Municipality, are noted incompetence, gross mismanagement, and political callousness by the PNC-controlled City Council, where Hamilton Green seems more emotionally obsessed in opposing the current Town Clerk than trying to behave as a Mayor of competence and integrity. Against the backdrop of last week’s flood-related horror experiences in Georgetown, change must soon come. And Hamilton Green seems destined to be among the leading political casualties. Stay tuned.
