The Mayor and the vendors

On Wednesday Mayor Ubraj Narine along with MP Sherod Duncan were escorted to the Brickdam Police Station and charged with attempting to excite hostility or ill will on the ground of race, using a computer system in an attempt to excite ethnic division on the ground of race and obstructing traffic. In the case of Mr Duncan this would hardly have caused any raised eyebrows, since he is not, after all, renowned for either his circumspection, discretion or diplomacy. The Mayor of Georgetown, however, is not quite in the same category.

Leaving aside the unacceptable comments of Mr Narine, jurisdictional issues are at the heart of this whole story. It has its origins in the desire of the Georgetown Public Hospital to have vendors who are currently occupying its main thoroughfare relocated.  That thoroughfare, which is not a particularly wide road, is the route by which the outpatient and emergency departments are accessed.

In a press release the GPHC said that the relevant authorities had been written to on the matter in 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2022.  It did not indicate which authorities had been contacted, although it might be remarked that in the years 2016 and 2019 as well as possibly 2015, the hospital perhaps thought that it would not have made much difference since the local authority and the government were under the control of the same party. It seems likely, therefore, that in 2022 the hospital wrote only to the government, considering that that had changed and it had previously had no success with APNU+AFC at whatever level.

The first thing to be said is that vendors on no account should be allowed to ply their trade on a road where ambulances and sick patients require ease of ingress to the country’s largest medical institution. That street should be free from encumbrances, and no argument about the hardship on vendors should they be removed can take precedence over this requirement. As things stand it does the city authorities no credit that they were allowed to establish themselves there in the first place.

As with so many things in this nation, however, an attempt on the part of Public Works Minister Juan Edghill to have the vendors removed got out of control. The government had earlier issued them with a final notice to move out their stalls, sheds, carts, caravans and motor vehicles which they were using for vending, a notice which they duly ignored. Some time after 11 pm on Monday the GPF appeared to effect the removal but vendors placed themselves in the path of the police truck which had been loaded with one of the caravans. The Mayor tried several times to speak to the truck driver who would not engage in any exchanges, so then Mr Narine lay down under the truck so it could not move.

In a statement he also maintained that if Minister Edghill decided to move the vendors, the correct approach would have been to consult with the Mayor & City Council first.  “I have no problem with relocation of the people… but let us have a discussion with the people. The government have no regards for local democracy…  This kind of dictatorship must stop in this country. You have to have consultation with the vendors and council,” he said. The M&CC has always been of the view that the matter of vendors fell under its exclusive jurisdiction − not that it has ever had much success in dealing with them – and this position was more recently reiterated at several statutory meetings.

The government creates some of its own problems for itself. President Irfaan Ali promotes ‘One Guyana’, and wants to create a context for the inclusion of African Guyanese. This all sounds very admirable except that he doesn’t want inclusion for the people African-Guyanese voted for. His government bypasses local government in general, but that becomes a particular problem when it involves a major opposition-controlled local authority like the City Council. That body does not have the virtue of competence, but that does not mean it does not have legal authority where city affairs are concerned, and can be overridden at will, irrespective of law and convention.

If Minister Edghill had first approached the municipality about the hospital vendors, and the council had refused to cooperate, then the issues would have taken on an entirely different character. They would have revolved around the central issue of the need to remove the vendors, and the lack of cooperation on the part of the municipality.

But while the Minister of Works asserted that the matter was not a political partisan issue, his actions have turned it into one. Among other things the confrontation was the provocation for the vendors on Monday to noisily voice allegations of racism, in tandem with the opposition party’s accusations. It is another example of how sidestepping lawful authorities the government dislikes can lead to unintended consequences.

The arrest by the police of Messrs Narine and Duncan on Wednesday at City Hall was another cause for chaos. This continued all the way to Brickdam Police Station with Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton and other party leaders in attendance, and then resumed when the two accused were given bail. Given that the vendors and others think that the Mayor is supporting them, Minister Edghill has nothing to lose by approaching the M&CC now and letting them agree to remove the vendors. If they don’t agree, then the censure will fall on them.

The Mayor has described the Minister’s action as nothing other than “a deliberate economic strategy aimed at preventing poor people from earning a decent living, further pushing them into poverty.” That is not the purpose of the exercise, and he knows it, but it is incumbent on the City Council if approached by the government, to exercise its under utilised imagination and find the vendors some alternative location.

And finally there is the matter of Mr Narine’s impermissible comments over which he has been charged. Unusually these related not to race, but religion, a subject which both sides in this contentious polity of ours strenuously avoid. On this occasion he is reported to have said: “Why the President don’t want to work with me? Maybe because I’m a Hindu it may lead to religion now… because I’m a Hindu and he is a Muslim, that’s why he doesn’t want to work with me?”

He has been roundly and justifiably condemned for this, although in fairness to him – and this is rare for other transgressors where these kinds of remarks are concerned – he did issue an unreserved apology the following day. There have been some calls for his resignation or removal, although this is unlikely in the circumstances.

Considering that the government is hardly innocent where inappropriate language is concerned – no one forgets Mr Jagdeo’s rants at Babu John on more than one occasion some years ago – which were attended by no consequences, one can only wonder at the wisdom of the charges against the Mayor given his apology and the latitude offered by Article 146 of the Constitution on the protection of freedom of expression. Depending on what happens in the interval, the repercussions could be more bother than our fragile democracy needs. 

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