Thursday was a bad day for democracy in Georgetown. Never mind all the earlier hype about ordinary citizens being represented by individuals as well as political parties, who were to create a new template for democratic expression in their various councils. Well, not this year, and not in the Mayor and City Council.
The occasion was the meeting at City Hall for the councillors to elect a new mayor. The incumbent, whose raiment can normally light up the horseshoe table like an Amazonian macaw can illuminate the forest, was on this occasion garbed in a somewhat subdued, albeit modish suit. Her right-hand official, the Town Clerk, who conducted the proceedings, opted for a sombre sartorial approach, which in avian terms might equate to the plumage of the ever loquacious mynah bird.
If nothing else, the wardrobe of the key players lent support to the impression that the whole election exercise was a carefully scripted one-act drama. It has to be understood that Georgetown is PNC territory, politically speaking – not APNU or PNCR, but PNC. It is true that the local government elections earlier this year, like the national ones, were contested by the coalition APNU+AFC, but where the capital is concerned, the AFC numerically speaking, has no purchase. The arrangement at the highest levels of this country’s coalition political entities, therefore, might seem to be that the mayorship goes to the PNC and the deputy’s post is filled by an AFC councillor. Having said that, it might be observed that even with no formal or informal agreement in place, the majority held by PNC councillors is sufficiently large for such an arrangement to be imposed through the agency of their vote alone.
Whatever the case, that formula appears to be what obtained in the first mayoral election following the March polls, with the PNC’s Patricia Chase-Green, who has been embedded in the city council since 1994, being elected mayor, and the AFC’s Sherod Duncan taking the post of her deputy. But then Mr Duncan, a newcomer to the mysteries of City Hall and a critic of the parking meters’ blunder, threw a proverbial spanner into the political works. In Thursday’s ballot, the Mayor stood for re-election and her Deputy stood against her – or he did until about an hour before the vote.
As we related in our report in SN’s Friday edition, once Town Clerk Royston King had opened the floor for nominations, Councillor Oscar Clarke, who is also the PNC General Secretary “immediately” proposed an open vote by a show of hands. Councillor Carlyle Goring then countered this with the proposition that there should be a secret ballot, a suggestion which went nowhere after 19 PNC (APNU) councillors voted against it. Mr Goring, an AFC councillor received seven votes comprising all the opposition councillors, in addition to the three from his own party.
So here we are in the twenty-first century, more than one hundred and fifty years after Britain passed the Ballot Act requiring secret ballots in elections, and in a context where our constitution stipulates that national and local government polls be held by secret ballot, regressing to the nineteenth century. It hardly bears remarking that that was an era notorious for bribery and intimidation in electoral matters. The most ludicrous ‒ and paradoxical ‒ aspect of this story is the fact that the secret ballot proposal was voted down by a show of hands.
It was not that Mr Clarke was at all reticent about explaining why there should be a show of hands: “We would all like to know how everyone votes today,” our report quoted him as saying. The proprietor of a pocket or rotten borough in 18th or 19th century England would have agreed with him wholeheartedly. One can only suppose that the PNC was nervous that their councillors would not follow instructions, and perhaps do what the legislation intended them to do, and vote for whomsoever they considered the better candidate for the post. The party could not have been sure what would happen of course; their dutiful councillors might still have given Ms Chase-Green a majority on a secret ballot, even if not as large a one as she received on a show of hands. However, they were not prepared to take the risk they might lose control, or even set a precedent for a breaking of ranks.
In that respect, they have demonstrated they are no different from the PPP: control is everything, and democracy only has appeal if you are in opposition.
After the prelude, the little City Hall drama proceeded apace, still according to script. As we reported, Councillor Gregory Fraser rose to propose Ms Chase-Green for the mayoral post, and without any pause, Councillor Clarke seconded the motion. Hard on his heels came Councillor Junior Garrett who without further ado called for nominations to be closed, a motion too which found a seconder with splendid reflexes in the form of Councillor Noelle Chow-Chee. According to our reporter, the whole process took all of 48 seconds, surely a first in terms of expeditious local government elections. If nothing else, Georgetown can boast of councillors who are not only the most quick-thinking in the local government firmament, but also the fittest, given that they are so fast on their feet.
Needless to say, Ms Chase-Green was re-elected, although her deputy on this occasion was Mr Lionel Jaikarran of the AFC, since Mr Duncan had withdrawn his candidacy in respect of both the mayorship and the deputy mayorship. He alleged the process had been “tainted” by “ministerial” interference and that councillors had been “coerced” into voting in a certain way. The Minister involved was not named, although one can reasonably speculate that he was not referring to the Minister of Communities. Mr Duncan did not contest for the post of deputy mayor either, because ‒ as we quoted him as saying ‒ that position “requires someone more in tune with the incumbent Mayor’s thinking and work ethic.”
At the end of the proceedings the new Mayor (or Mayor-elect, as the Town Clerk insists) launched into the customary thanks to everyone including the Almighty. She need not have bothered; there was only one entity she needed to thank, and that was the PNC party machine.
