Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter purportedly written by an Abel Matthews captioned “Bishop Hammie has no congregation” (07.01.01) suggesting that the recent revelations by Mayor Hamilton Green on the “sorry state of affairs at City Hall” is the last spin of the Mayoral Dice, whatever that means.
This writer is obviously quite politically disposed and from his very own utterances is perceptibly a devotee of the political party in office. However this gentleman in his enthusiasm to write off Mayor Green, and to shower praises on the central government for the good work he alleges they have been doing in the city, fails to be objective, or deal with the real issues that the Mayor was attending to in his release. What is so wrong with the Mayor highlighting some of the problems the council faces, many of which are very conspicuous? What is wrong with the Mayor seeking to achieve the establishment of a legislative framework where the city could be empowered to effectively provide the services expected of them rather than await the occasional handout from the President?
Mr. Mathews seems to have forgotten the rhetoric disseminated widely and repeatedly by the government that there was a return to democracy in 1992, when the ruling party took office. Well, democracy is not state control of the municipalities and local authorities, which currently exists in Guyana. For Mr. Matthews’s information that is hegemony. And why does Mr. Matthews not query the reason why the press release by the Mayor did not appear in the Guyana Chronicle? Is freedom of expression not an important tenet of democracy? Or is state control more desirable for Mr. Matthews?
Democratization allows for the allocation of financial resources or revenue-raising capacity sufficient for local governments to fulfill their responsibilities. What is in fact happening here is a repudiation of the natural return to democracy. His religious anecdotes through initially seeming witty and humorous do not reflect reality. What indeed obtains now is that a large percentage of decent and devoted citizens of Georgetown and Guyana would like to see not the government running around fixing a few roads, avenues and pumps in the city for obvious political mileage, but instead the urgent launching of large scale political reform aimed at the creation of a new decentralized and more democratic system of governance in Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Justin Cadogan
