Dear Editor,
We would like to add to Gokarran Sukhdeo’s letter ( ‘Green and the PPP are the problem not the solution,’ SN, June 14) in addressing the issue of Hamilton Green as raised by Dr Dolly Hassan in her letter in SN, June 11, titled, ‘The PNC should concede that certain mistakes were made during its tenure.’ Dr Hassan, in her letter, says, “…Hamilton Green (oh, good ole Hammy), who is a ghostly and ghastly reminder of repression. He exemplifies how we can decay as a nation when we are governed by race-based politics. The stench of Green’s Georgetown is a metaphor for the nation.”
For the record, we hold no brief for Hamilton Green nor the City Council that has been in place since 1994. What we would like to focus on, however, is the fact the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) has been used as a political football by the PPP to further a race-based narrative about incompetence and corruption, and give people precisely the impression articulated in Dr Hassan’s letter.
We posit that Green has only been in place for so long because of the PPP’s belief in the concept the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Incidentally, this concept has its origins in the ancient Indian political treatise, Arthashastra. Not only is this evident in the case of Hamilton Green, but also in the case of Odinga Lumumba, Kwame McCoy, Manniram Prashad, Gillian Burton, Carvil Duncan and Joe Hamilton (a self-confessed enforcer of the infamous House of Israel, that Dr Hassan, even though she is not aware of the day-to-day politics in Guyana, ought to know of), among others.
The issue of Green would have been resolved long ago by local government elections (LGE) that were due since 1997. However, LGE today are solely held up by the PPP. We believe this is because the PPP cannot get over that it was unable to win Georgetown at the height of its popularity in 1994. Instead they have chosen to viciously punish Georgetown ever since. This delay also relates to the fact that the PPP could dominate all the local bodies by inserting their interim management committees (IMCs). The latter is one of the points under contention between President Ramotar and the opposition, which wants to reduce the power of the local government minister to implant IMCs at will.
As stated earlier, we hold no brief for the M&CC, but we are compelled to note some of the requests by the council that were denied by the PPP government: a portion of the environmental tax, implementing a container tax, holding a lottery, assuming responsibility for fire hydrants, engaging in a project to extract gas from the Le Repentir dumpsite and implementing parking meters. The council also had two revenue-earning operations shut down by the PPP: a car park near Bourda Market and the supervision of the Vreed-en-Hoop-Georgetown speedboat operations. The council also does not have the power to reassess property valuations to collect taxes. The PPP has not only neutralised the power of the council to collect taxes, but also it is deliberately starving it of funds.
We also direct Dr Hassan to the remarks of then Minister of Local Government Kellawan Lall, who on the 14th of July 2010, in the midst of yet another garbage crisis, said: “Well, if there is a health crisis in the city I’ll be glad because it’ll remove the city council. They’ll be responsible for it.” The Ministry of Public Works has oft repeated that it has the power to intervene in the city, and has done so in emergencies, for example, the Le Repentir dumpsite and the Cummings Koker. The ministry has also engaged in periodic clean-ups, for example, in the Albouystown area last December. This to us, clearly indicates that the while the government has the capacity to ease the woes of Georgetown, it prefers to engage in racial politics instead.
Dr Hassan ought to know too, that a large portion of people in Georgetown vote PPP. These people are collateral damage in the race war that the PPP is intent on perpetuating in the mistaken belief it can win. We, therefore, believe that Dr Hassan’s words, “exemplifies how we can decay as a nation when we are governed by race-based politics,” best applies to the PPP.
However, Editor, we would like to reassure Dr Hassan that we abhor adversarial politics and are advocates for an all-hands-on-deck approach to resolving the various issues our country faces. In that regard we seek to counter destructive race-based propaganda and we hope that Dr Hassan sees our letter in that light.
Georgetown is too important for us to just allow it to continue to suffer the way it has, particularly in recent years. The boundaries of Georgetown were expanded to include Agricola in the south and Turkeyen in the east in 1970. Thousands of persons who reside outside of Georgetown (East and West Demerara) work there with the numbers going up each year. Moreover, without a proper public transport system in place that we once enjoyed decades ago, there is a huge influx of vehicles that clog the city. Poorly administered markets, despite the increase in supermarkets, adversely affect our rural farmers and hinder agricultural development. It is clear Georgetown urgently needs new administrators and adequate central government support. In that regard, we would like to solicit Dr Hassan’s help in pressuring the PPP to accede to LGE so that we can move forward.
Yours faithfully,
Gerhard Ramsaroop
Tarron Khemraj
