While welcoming the protest against the implementation of the metered parking system in Georgetown as a sign that citizens are finally engaged with governance, Communities Minister Ronald Bulkan has reiterated that central government is not inclined to intervene.
In an interview with Stabroek News yesterday, Bulkan said it is the duty of the people who elected the city council to curb their actions and who in 2018 will have another chance to decide who will formulate and implement policy on their behalf. It is not central government’s responsibility.
Both the Private Sector Commission (PSC) and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) last Friday called on central government to resolve the dispute between the citizenry and the municipality, while saying that businesses were suffering from the implementation. Many drivers have been avoiding the metered parking zones in the commercial districts.
The PSC went as far as to call for government to scrap the contract for the project, which it said has “virtually crippled retail business in the city.” “The Private Sector Commission has received impassioned pleas of businesses which have seen their sales decline by as much as fifty percent since the introduction of metered parking in the city,” it said in a statement.
The GCCI, in a separate statement, said the current state of affairs compelled it to urge the government to intervene promptly and help to facilitate a solution that would be fair and acceptable to both the M&CC and the citizens of Georgetown. “The city’s economy is struggling along enough as it is, and therefore does not need any further disruptions as a result of poor planning, obstinacy and resultant push back,” it added.
Bulkan yesterday stressed that as someone who has been on many a picket line, he is happy to see so many persons, several of whom were silent before, voicing their opinions and utilising their democratic right to dissent.
“I strongly believe that our present underdevelopment is because of the inertia our people have displayed and I am happy that it now seems to be a thing of the past,” Bulkan said before criticising the counter-protest, which was led by APNU councillor Heston Boswick.
“I am disappointed … at the counter-protest. We must be mature and respect the right of the people to disagree. We all have the common goal of progress and this can only be achieved if we engage each other respectfully,” he said.
Hundreds of citizens lined Regent Street, opposite City Hall on Friday, to demonstrate against the implementation of the metered parking system but what was intended to be a silent, apolitical protest by the Movement Against Parking Meters (MAPM), saw tempers flare after a very vocal counter-protest was organised by those backing the project.
Wearing tags declaring that they were part of a “Peaceful picket” the 50-plus counter-protestors who stood in front of City Hall shouted demeaning slogans towards those silently gathered across the road. Some APNU councillors and the employees of the contractor for the meter system, Smart City Solutions, supported the counter-protest.
Asked to comment on the decision of several councillors to join the picket line, Bulkan reiterated that in this case it is for the people to judge the actions of the representatives they have elected.
“There are 15 constituency representatives on the council. These individual councillors were elected directly by the people and answer directly to the people, not to any political party. The people must hold them accountable and in this new dispensation they have a chance to do just that in 2018,” Bulkan explained.
He noted that while many continue to call for constitutional reform, there must first be constitutional respect. It is this respect, according to the minister, that he has displayed in signing the metered parking bylaws.
“Constitutionally-elected representatives have passed these bylaws and they have been vetted by the Attorney General (AG) and found to not be in contradiction of our national laws. So, I as Minister have no grounds on which to withhold my signature,” he explained. Bulkan maintains that the AG had vetted the bylaws before he signed them in contradiction of a claim made by Minister of State Joseph Harmon last week that they were now being vetted.
Bulkan’s response to the protest is a stark contrast to that of Georgetown Mayor Patricia Chase-Green and Town Clerk Royston King.
On the day of the protest, King told reporters that those protesting the parking meters really intended to “continue their personal interests and their indiscipline,” while adding that the city would have none of that.
“People who are against the parking meter are really those who are backward thinking and those who are bent on keeping Georgetown in squalor, in dirt and indiscipline,” he declared. “…Some of these people are people who have been parking on our reserves and thoroughfares for years without compensating this city, without giving citizens any single thing, these are the big, large businesses, who have been squatting on council’s reserves, who have been squatting on council’s thoroughfares, who have been squatting on council’s spaces without paying a cent to the council,” he also said.
This attack on the protestors was continued yesterday by Mayor Chase-Green, who in a statement to media referred to the protest as one allegedly sponsored by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
However, the anti-parking meter movement has maintained that it is not politically-affiliated. During its protest on Friday, both AFC and PPP councillors, who have also objected to the system, showed their solidarity with citizens by joining the protest.
But Chase-Green claimed that several business owners associated with the PPP brought their workers and other related staff to demonstrate against the council and an initiative implemented to generate revenue, reduce traffic congestion and make the roads and sidewalks cleaner and safer.
Chase-Green went on to attack the protestors, while noting that City Hall’s records show that quite a number of those who have shouted the loudest against metered parking “have neglected to honour their civic responsibility and continue to appropriate city spaces without compensating citizens who collectively own them.”
“I would only note that prior to the new era of local democracy, when the city was trashed with rubbish, unkempt parapets, stagnant alleyways and drains, broken and impassable roads and a host of environmental negatives that those who are now agitating were neither seen nor heard speaking out against the evils which were committed against the city when the council was controlled from offices in Kingston and Robb Street,” she said.
“…The Council calls upon all law abiding citizens to resist this attempt by the PPP and their associates to take Georgetown backwards to indiscipline, lawlessness and confusion and to embrace forward thinking and programmes by the City Council aimed at development, progresses and prosperity,” she added.
In a Facebook response to Chase-Green last night, the movement noted that she was attempting to link the outrage at the city council’s “bullyism and disrespect of the citizenry” with politics and in particular with the PPP /C. “These lies are clearly an attempt to sow discord amongst us who feel strongly about the M&CC’s blatant disregard of our right to demand accountability from them as elected officials. They work for us, not the other way around. Let’s us show them that regardless of our political beliefs we can stand united on issues such as corruption and the need for basic decency in public life. Let us stay strong in our protest against parking meters,” it said.
