Dear Editor,
Mark Benschop is running a politically misleading campaign. His logo says, ‘Team Benschop for Mayor,’ when he is actually running as a councillor. Anyhow you parse the logo it amounts to misrepresentation. Mr Benschop cannot run in the local government elections (LGE) for mayor, neither can any in his team run for mayor. He and all his team members must first contest as councillors and win as councillors and then the different councillors from all the constituencies, collectively (all 30 of them), will vote for a person to be mayor. So when Mr Benschop continues to use his misleading logo, he is behaving in the way the average politician behaves, which behaviour has caused many to reject politicians as tricksters.
Mr Benschop is single-handedly responsible for the misinformation that the voters in the LGE will determine the mayor, yet he continues to perpetuate that falsity despite the clarion call for him to cease. If Team Benschop wants to be honest, all they have to is replace the word ‘Mayor’ in their logo with the correct word ‘Councillor’ and the logo would then be both politically and ethically correct. But Team Benschop seems reluctant to make that timely and conscionable correction, because they are more interested in winning than in being honest. And to think that I admired Mr Benschop who fought so hard to remove a government that he claimed was dishonest in their dealings.
Further, Mr Benschop thinks that the current Mayor and City Council is behaving in shady ways and he is even calling for accountability and transparency. Yet he continues to run a campaign that is steeped in misinformation.
The reason Team Benschop is using that logo with the word ‘Mayor’ in it, is because when a person goes into the voting booth in any constituency they will think that they are voting for Mr Benschop as Mayor and not the local representative per se. So rather than the competence of the individual, local councillors being scrutinized, Team Benschop is getting a free ride on the popularity of Mark Benschop. Let me hasten to say that what Mr Benschop and his team are doing by falsifying their campaign, is political genius. No doubt this twisted strategy was designed to win many votes and might even get him close to the mayoral position.
But what it also shows is that Mr Benschop is the consummate politician who has surrounded himself with like-minded thinkers. It also shows what kind of a person he is and what tactics he will employ to govern, should he win as councillor and get the mayorship.
I also saw that Mr Sherrod Duncan of the APNU+AFC has decided to challenge Mr Nigel Hughes on a statement the latter made. Mr Hughes has stated emphatically that the central government should not contest in the LGE. One needs to be reminded that Mr Hughes forms an integral part of the AFC party and is well respected as an objective and critical thinker. One would correctly surmise that when he noted his objections to the coalition participating in the LGE, he was not being trite or flippant. He would have first examined the realities and objectives of local government and its purpose and he would have spoken out of concern for the maintenance of its integrity.
Like Mr Hughes, I too think that it is a blatant conflict of interest for the central government to want to lead the local government, notwithstanding that it was this current government which instituted and passed a bill decentralizing the management of local government. So I am very surprised that Mr Duncan would want to challenge Mr Hughes for making a candid and noteworthy observation.
It is obvious that Mr Duncan is hoping that the prevailing popularity of the APNU+AFC coalition will catapult him into a councillor’s seat. However, the real test of his personal popularity would have been realized if he had been man enough to contest, like me, as an independent. Mr Duncan’s missive against Mr Hughes is a desperate shot across the bow. He knows full well that Mr Hughes is correct.
Editor, what is coincidental about both Mr Benschop and Mr Duncan is that they are both vying for the same councillor’s seat in District 14. The word on the street is that one of them is likely to win. The M&CC may well therefore have as a councillor from that district, one who has no problem with amending the truth to win at all costs, or one whose primary allegiance is to the central government and not his constituents. Either way, the system is being played and made a mockery of.
Yours faithfully,
Wendell Jeffrey, Pastor
Independent Candidate
Wortmanville/Werk-en-Rust,
District 8
