Despite just winning one seat on the city council via proportional representation in Friday’s Local Government Elections (LGE), leader of Team Benschop for Mayor, Mark Benschop, said the seat will be rotated among members of the group and used to fight for the disempowered in Georgetown.
“We have decided, and I have told my team, that the one seat doesn’t belong to me and doesn’t belong to any one individual but Team Benschop. It belongs to the group and every single one of us worked very hard for it and as a result that one seat is not going to be occupied for me for the entire three years or by any one for the entire period, in fact, I don’t even think anyone will occupy it for one year,” Benschop told Stabroek News yesterday, stating that his team has made the decision to implement a rotation system. He said that the first and second persons will serve six months each and the others will serve the remaining two years for three months each. It is unclear whether the rules governing the election will permit this.
“Who serves first has not yet been decided but my take is that my preference is that we put one of our female candidates to open our batting … because we have a lot of competent female candidates,” Benschop said.
Benschop, who lost the First-Past-The-Post contest in Constituency 14 to APNU+AFC’s Sherod Duncan, says his movement will continue its work.
“Team Benschop wants to focus on the next three years. We have done absolutely nothing wrong. Team Benschop had the best campaign and plans, people were attracted to us. Did that accumulate votes? No. It should’ve but sometimes we are complacent and the very low voters turnout showed that residents who believed in us should’ve gone out and vote,” he said, adding that it allowed persons to win who may not have had their communities’ best interest at heart. APNU+AFC captured 25 of the 30 seats.
While Benschop admitted that his group had lost and made no excuse, he said that they understood why they did and it is their duty to ensure that the same reason did not prevail come the next elections. “I would like to take this opportunity to wish the winning party all the best and hope they will work in the best interest of the residents. We are willing to work in the best interests of the residents of Georgetown and even with our one seat we will stand up. We are not going anywhere,” he said, stating that they will not barge into the council with their gloves out, armed to fight, but will walk in with their hands out, ready to work with the council.
“We [Team Benschop] accept the results albeit we expected something better and we didn’t get it this time around which is obviously not our fault but just the voting pattern in this country,” Benschop said, blasting the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and the major political parties for not adequately ensuring that the masses were educated properly enough on the role of LGE.
Unfair
“… At least next time around people will be more au fait with LGE and what it is all about and there will be more efforts on the part of GECOM and the major parties to ensure that that message gets out there with regards to LGE,” he said, stating that the majority of his campaign was spent trying to explain the process and importance of LGE to the people which he deemed as unfair. “Instead of us going out there and trying to sell our plans for this city we have to talk about LGE. It is unacceptable that most of our time was spent talking about the process,” he added.
Benschop said that while the LGE is important for democracy, most of the parties, especially the ruling party spent their time trying to solicit support from their supporters without getting into the real meaning of LGE.
“We thought that by itself contributed to the results. The president himself said that once we welcome LGE that people voted for the big parties and yes we agree that people voted for the big party,” Benschop added, contending that people did not look at the issues, policies and who had the best plan but voted for a symbol.
“When you look at constituency 13 people didn’t vote on issues and policy, they voted on a system. For a guy who has been accused of a very heinous crime, accused mind you. We saw the relevant minister knew about it weeks before and she dismissed it as a personal family matter and the party subsequently withdrew their support for that individual but we saw persons went out and vote,” he said. He was referring to the election of Winston Harding even though APNU+AFC publicly withdrew its support for him after a report appeared in Stabroek News about a charge that had been laid against him.
Benschop declared that upon taking up its seat on the council, his team will move towards having Harding removed.
In tackling voting based on party loyalty, Benschop said that there needs to be a fresh set of individuals who are not attached to any party. “…Because when you run as an independent the major parties already have people on the ground ready to stain and scandal you without sticking to the issue and often times people are tricked by the party representatives,” he said, stating that the dishonesty has to stop and voters need to mature in terms of choosing their candidates.
“I think we have presented the best team, I am not saying the others might not have had good people, they have but people have tossed us aside for a party symbol and we will educate the masses and say let us be wise because when we cast our vote blindly we end up in the same mess over and over again,” he added.
He said one of the things his team plans on doing with their seat is to push for reform of local government elections and to push for transparency.
“Team Benschop intends to fight for LGE reform so that it can come up to scratch with modern day thinking. For example scrapping the Town Clerk position, scrapping the manner in voting and allowing residents to vote directly for the mayor,” Benschop said, stating that they will also utilise their seat to push for transparency where taxpayers will be able to see exactly where their monies are being spent.
While persons have raised questions about the funding for Benschop’s campaign, he said the public is welcome to visit his office and scrutinise their funding and spending as he and his team have not done anything wrong.
