Dear Editor,
The parking meter fiasco has now assumed an interesting twist. After remaining silent for a considerable time, the AFC has now broken its silence and condemned the Mayor for attacks on Mr Sherod Duncan, who is an executive member of the party and also the Deputy Mayor.
According to an AFC statement, an attack on Mr Duncan is an attack on the AFC, and the party calls on the Mayor to immediately withdraw her accusations, offer an unqualified apology and take a more conciliatory approach towards resolving the issue of the widespread rejection of the indecent and oppressive contract.
It is doubtful whether the call by the AFC will be heeded by the Mayor who seemed determined to press ahead with the parking meters despite widespread condemnation by the citizens of Georgetown, and for that matter the wider society. The Mayor is obviously trying to appease public opinion by agreeing to some amendments to the existing agreement but from all indications it is now a case of too little too late. The agreement should be scrapped in its entirety and the council needs to find new ways of generating revenue. This is undoubtedly a bad deal which ought to dumped, and the sooner the better.
The attacks on Mr Duncan by the Mayor are likely to deepen tension between the APNU and its junior coalition partner the AFC which is coming under increasing pressure to assert itself as an independent actor in the political arena.
The APNU also has now found itself, as it were, between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it has demonstrated little appetite to intervene in the matter due in part to the fact that the Mayor and the majority of councillors are creatures of the APNU, and also its reluctance to throw money into what appears to be a bottomless city council pit. On the other hand, its core constituency in the city is opposed to the parking meters which could hurt the party politically in future municipal and national elections.
One possible solution out of this emerging crisis, it would seem, is for the government to exercise its executive and statutory powers and instruct the council to terminate the contract and find ways to arrive at some form of compensation for the investor in relation to expenditures already incurred in what is clearly an ill-conceived, if not ill-fated project.
Yours faithfully,
Hydar Ally
