There is never a dull moment in the cat sparring between Central Government and City Hal…and things are likely to get worse before they get better with Hammie Green now being not only Mayor but, apparently, harbouring ambitions of being the PNCR’s presidential candidate.
City Hall, of course, is what one might call a soft target. It is regarded as a poor excuse for a municipality; it has few friends, if any; few citizens bat an eyelid when the government chooses to beat up on City Hall. The Mayor and his Councillors are easy pickings AND MUCH OF IT IS THEIR FAULT.
That is why Mr. Jagdeo and his government continue to play Mayor Green and his Councillors like a fiddle. One minute they are cussing out the municipality then they change gears, Charging (like the proverbial Don Quixote) to the rescue of the citizens each time there is a crisis whether it be flooding in the city or the mismanagement of our mountains of urban garbage.
The government’s methods may be crude and transparent and designed to do even more damage to City Hall’s already shoddy image but it knows it is batting on a good wicket.
Take the dismantling of the structures outside Stabroek Market after the hand grenade fiasco; a classical case of the good cop, bad cop. Kellawan Lall and Robeson Benn played the bad cops and President Jagdeo, of course, played the good cop. The grenade goes off and Lall with the ministerial demolition expert in tow swings into action, demolishing the illegal structures and sparking a knee jerk protest from the vendors. But wait? It’s election year and the last thing President Jagdeo wants is a spate of urban working class protests in an election year. So after the structures have been demolished he meets with the vendors…fifty or so of them… and says to them “ok, I’ll let you trade under new rules,” all in a relentless effort to create the image of a knight in shining armour.
Of course the Mayor should have been part of the plan to deal with the Stabroek structures! But who cares that he was excluded? City Hall, after, all, has few friends and no image to speak about. The Mayor can carry on about a “breach of protocol and decency,” until the cows come home; no one’s listening anyway. This, Mr. Mayor, is about politics, not protocol.
