The Corriverton Interim Management Committee (IMC) Town Clerk, Narendra Sookram, was on Friday handed a petition by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) signed by over 600 persons from Corriverton calling for the dissolution of the IMC, deeming the body illegal and unconstitutional.
When contacted on Saturday, Minister of Local Government, Ganga Persaud, speaking to this newspaper via telephone from Georgetown, said that “I am unaware of what happened (APNU going into Corriverton on Friday) but my response is very clear: then it is illegal for Mr (Ronald) Bulkan and his team going in to threaten any Town Clerk and deem anything illegal.
The IMC is legal and is operating legally. Bulkan’s actions are certainly not in keeping with any legality at all and the town clerk must be advised very clearly that he or she takes no directions or instructions from no other than the Ministry of Local Government and that’s not rocket science”.
Member of Parliament of the ruling Party, Faizal M. Jaffarally has stated that Local Government elections “are long overdue in this country and the PPP administration would like to go to the polls tomorrow and we are prepared as a government and political party to go to the polls tomorrow”. He said that unfortunately the political opposition in parliament has been going to and fro “making all sorts of demands because probably they are not ready”.
He said “let us go to the elections and afterwards, we can probably decide, you know, what you want and what you don’t want because right now, the residents of New Amsterdam and in Georgetown also, we all know what is happening in GT and in many NDC’s and we need to congratulate and thank the people who have served, but it has been too long, some have migrated, some have died, some have run out of ideas so we need new people with creative ideas because this is an evolving society in which we live and you know, we need new thinking, so that we can have properly-functioning municipalities and NDC’s”.
APNU’s Bulkan, in speaking with Stabroek News, stated that the APNU team comprised former Corriverton Councillor, Ms Mac Donald, Everette Harewood, Verna Lyken, Jagdip Persaud, Fitz O’ Brien and Dr Rishee Thakur of the APNU Secretariat.
The party, he said, is highly concerned at the series of events that has been unfolding in the Corriverton municipality over the last few weeks, and made special reference to the spate of newspaper articles about the ousting of former Corriverton mayor, Roy Baijnauth.
Baijnauth and his councillors were evicted from office in May and were given no formal notification by the relevant authorities. Baijnauth had said that he was disappointed in the manner in which the entire procedure of choosing an IMC was carried out. He stated that all he received was an ordinary fax titled ‘Public Notice’ informing his (former) town clerk of the names of the new persons on the IMC. The current IMC has 12 members. It was alleged that the current IMC has only PPP members, whereas the former municipality had PNC members as well as PPP members.
Bulkan said that APNU is very concerned about the legality of the IMC body given the fact that Baijnauth was unceremoniously dumped along with the other councillors. The petition as well as a warning letter was delivered to the Town Clerk in the absence of IMC Chairman, Bhawase Harripaul, who was said to be out of the country. Bulkan said that Harripaul will be receiving copies of the documents immediately upon his arrival in the country.
Part of the letter states, “As our petition, the APNU document make clear, we find little favour with the IMC that has been arbitrarily imposed on the municipality. We consider it to be wholly illegal and morally unjustified. Its imposition failed to observe the minimal standards of fairness, equity and transparency that are the hallmarks of any democratic community”. The party is therefore calling for the removal of the IMC and “its replacement with either one that is based on the principle of proportionality or revert to the remnants of the 1994- elected Council. Second, we urge on the government the holding of long- overdue local government elections, at the earliest, so that citizens can elect their own leaders; we want elections, not selections”, the letter read.
Bulkan said that the process of selection of the IMC members was highly irregular. “What citizens want is elections, not hand-picking— going about the place hand-picking cronies and then what they would have done is starve the NDC’s and Municipalities of resources and they gonna pump the resources now to give themselves an advantage when these elections are held, so it is mischief— political mischief!”
He said that this is unhelpful and not going to lead to the social cohesion that the country so badly needs and “we are calling on them to stop it— Whittaker and his superiors and his cronies…” When asked what happens from here, Bulkan said that “the ball is in their court to try and bring back some sense into the equation” If the government doesn’t, he said, APNU “will have to look at the options—- I don’t want to prejudge and pre-empt. It is a very serious political issue, and it’s an issue that points to the core of stability and good governance and we cannot stand by and allow this sort of reckless acts that are going to endanger and it is preventing the delivery of service to communities and that is the big disappointment, because as you know, councillors or persons who gravitate to these local democratic organs do so largely on the basis of civic consciousness and the concept of volunteerism, so you cannot hand- pick people and when people are hand- picked, they don’t necessarily come with those qualities”.
