Dear Editor,
As I browsed SN’s three editorials on the parking meter upheavals starting from Sunday, February 12, there is appreciation for constitutional rights and democracy in action. But I must ask, after the meter revolution, what next? Would this prove to be the last straw that opened the floodgates of citizen participation and citizen pressure? Or is it going to be one more flicker that fizzles before there is the traditional moving on to more important interests? Can this be the precursor to pressing government on a menu of matters that provoke misery?
Before proceeding, I must repeat my prior support for the introduction and ongoing presence of parking meters; despite the snafus and pain, there are the associated positives previously identified. I am not moving from this position.
Having said this, I realize that agitating protestors and the concerned watchful silent are just as unmoved by the compromise of half price agreed to by the President. I learn that what is desired is the scrapping in its entirety of the project in its present form, and in any future reincarnation. Speaking from the context of a citizen directly impacted in more ways than one, I submit that scrapping is out of the question, and should be summarily dismissed as the ravings of the excited, and sometimes politically disturbed. I am all for the relief of reduction, discounts, concessions, and the like, but this project must proceed. This parking reality must, of necessity, continue.
Now SN was, in its characteristically sober and polite manner, understanding of the building avalanche in social media, and the accompanying downhill tumble onto the streets. But I must wonder as to the real roots of the tumult, the raw rage. It seemed incommensurate with the matter at hand. As I do so, I recall that it was said that the business of America is business. Taking that out on a limb, it seems to me that parking meters have become the business of business in Guyana. And where business is concerned in Guyana, there is always loose change around to make certain things happen, despite the wails of woe re business slowdown.
Now if that is not clear enough, then this ought to suffice: I am not altogether persuaded that the resistance and now outright rejection of anything related to parking meters is rooted in impersonal social media bonding and governmental anxieties. Interestingly, unlike crime waves, the parking meter matter has attracted commercial and political sponsorship, if not ownership. Crime lives (and thrives) despite abandoned parenthood; on the contrary, parking meters have brought out the godfathers ‒ well, at least those willing to show their faces.
The convergence of cabals is illuminating. The same segments (commercial and political) that dragged the capital into the gutter are now conjoined at the hip and pocket in dogged efforts to sabotage any restoration of Georgetown to some minimum state of civility, order, progress, and ambience. Indeed, the devil does prefer darkness and sleaze and chaos.
Editor, I would be the first to be unsparing of City Hall brass for appalling negligence, chronic recklessness, and despicable practices in the meter and other meaningful issues. But there is what is constructive, and what could be progressive, if only in the tabling and the unveiling. I tender that parking meter is one plank in such a progressive platform.
Separately, it would be progressive and democratic on the part of these same supposedly concerned citizens to be just as vociferous and unyielding, if and when such customary plagues as garbage, drainage, and floods overpower the yards, bottom flats, streets and communities. It would be most encouraging to see human chains around Charlotte Street or the busier Regent Street side and near Parliament Building while it is in session. Of course, many of those doing the clamouring do not have a sufficiently vested interest, as they reside at safe distances outside of the capital. They do not live in Georgetown; they just make their money there by any means. And they will call down hell (heaven has no ears for them) on those who seek to interfere with their commerce, many times of suspect origin.
Today, I must speculate as to what is in store when property values are revised upwards for rates and taxes purposes. That ten per cent increase does nothing and falls far short of reality. What will be the reaction then of those now howling and wringing hands? Many of them already owe staggering sums. Will the dogs (in any sense) be let loose to prowl and menace into retreat and submission?
For the clean non-professional protestors, it is good to observe them taking a stand. It would be better to behold similar rallying and immovable stances on other roiling matters. My belief is that soon enough there will be a reversion to the passive, the silence, and the absence of protest, the norm of before.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
