Dear Editor,
The article titled ‘Town Clerk should do the honourable things, resign -Acting Mayor Duncan’ refers (SN, March 23). Mr Duncan should be recognized for his bold call. Yet I believe that he fell short on a number of fronts, some of which will be shared here.
It is not one official who should have the decency, or a residue of some vestige of pride, or some personal standard to do the honourable thing, to do the right thing and resign, if only to save whatever face is left, and to spare the populace. I nominate the mayor, and all those who went to Mexico. I also offer up on a platter the heads of those who made possible those monstrosities in the Garden City, be they buildings or compressed suffocating thoroughfares.
This is much more than adherence to parking meter (which I still support) related orders from central government. It is about financial husbandry, leadership acumen, modern day governance best practices, and individual and political character (honour), all of which are distinctly lacking for the longest while now. Come to think of it, that comment about lack of professionalism brought a laugh, for if professionalism was a speeding garbage truck and they collided with it head-on, there would still be no light bulbs going off as to what professionalism is, or how to seek help to learn about it. In view of my hard sharp stance, I would be grateful if anyone would be honest enough and accurate enough to highlight where the captains of City Hall have worked to the benefit of this town and country. I express this more as a sanity check than as a challenge.
Also, the acting Mayor pinpointed doing “the honourable thing.” Where is that? And I mean inside and outside of City Hall. Who in the slack-jawed, glazed-eye, empty-headed pantheon of sawdust Caesars in this country has the DNA of “honourable” hardwired into their genes? And since when has “honourable” been part of the custom and tradition of either City Hall or elsewhere? To exercise anything remotely related to the honourable, it has to be present first, no matter how infinitesimal or superficial. Due to a palpable lack of any of this, it is why obdurate men and women view office in this society as entitlement and carry on as they do; one of these days they will discard the formalities and make such offices hereditary.
Editor, it is beyond my thinking as to how those subjected repeatedly to public shame and dishonour, and who are openly derided still have the stomach to show their faces in public. These mandarins have bitten the hands that fed them and kicked any dog that dares to bark at them. Two years into a new supportive government means that there can be no credible claims of a powerful political enemy. And yet there is dogged resistance at every turn, this clogged deafness, and this failure to come up with some programmes, practices and standards that justify existence, or which soothe the outraged citizenry.
I look, like other concerned citizens, for thoughtfulness and there is emptiness; I probe for benevolence and there is malevolence, no matter how couched; and I check for serving and the result is the glare of everything associated with the self-serving. Clearly, these folks are about collecting monies under false pretences; sometimes there is not even the covering shadow of pretence. The incompetence, the sheer ignorance, and the appalling dumbness of these entrenched mandarins are simply beyond belief.
Editor, I submit that the entire crew should be gotten rid of; that this country needs a gulag of some sort, and that if that is asking too much, then a plain archipelago would do.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
