If this is not to say that the recent collapse of the roof of the Stabroek Market wharf was, in considerable measure, the result of years of official inattention to its progressive deterioration, there was little doubt that the first official government response to the occurrence would have been to make the ‘political point’ about the tragedy occurring on the municipal ‘watch’ of an APNU-led local government administration.
Wasting no time with the details of what had been, over several years, the incremental ‘falling apart’ of one of the capital’s iconic buildings, the state-run Guyana Chronicle of Wednesday April 17 zeroed in on the ‘political’ point that it felt obliged to make about the collapse of the roof being the “end result of years of neglect by APNU-led City Council.”
The incumbent political administration may well hold forth about the Stabroek Market and its appurtenances falling under the operating responsibility of an APNU/AFC Local Govern-ment administration, though the fact that the comment about the perceived culpability of the said APNU/AFC-led municipality was made at the very beginning of the Guyana Chronicle report points unerringly to the rancid nature of our political culture and the enduring inclination for us to ‘trot out’ that rancidity as a ‘first response’ in almost every situation where political points appear to be on offer. Before we proceed any further, the APNU/AFC-controlled Georgetown City Council is, indeed, in the proverbial ‘driver’s seat’ insofar as the nominal managing of some of the more mundane affairs of the capital is concerned. That said, anyone who follows carefully the day to day municipal affairs in the capital would be inclined to question whether City Hall actually has its hands on the wheel, so to speak. Here, it is not a question of being the office holder, but one of wielding substantive political control.
The point should be made that in the circumstances where our substantive political culture has long been infested with a generous measure of narrow-mindedness and, moreover, where that culture is altogether unschooled in the virtue of magnanimity, ingrained prejudices will always obscure a vision that is impelled by what one might call the ‘greater good.’ This, of course, is hardly to say that some of the long-term holders of office at the municipal level have not proven themselves to be habitual underperformers even though they may argue that the financial constraints of a Georgetown municipality that is not politically favoured by the incumbent government is always likely to place the municipal infrastructure decidedly ‘up the creek’ as far as its coffers are concerned.
It is this set of circumstances, coupled with the enduring spitefulness that has long seized hold of our customary political behaviour, that is part of the problem; the other part being what sometimes appears to be a compelling proclivity on the part of City Hall for appalling levels of incompetence-driven mismanagement. It is hardly the intention of this editorial to be sympathetic to an urban municipal infrastructure that has been, for years, spectacular in its ineptitude and, to a considerable extent, deserving of the flak that it continues to attract. What we are certainly saying, however, is that to utilize the first handful of words in the state media report on the issue of the collapse of the Stabroek Market wharf as a first response to a regrettable urban emergency, does no more than make the point about the extent to which our political culture has becoming increasingly cheapened and degraded.
If the functional ‘upkeep’ of the Capital’s municipal markets has long proven to be out of the depth of City Hall, almost the whole of the problem has always appeared to repose in a paucity of resources. When coupled with the reality of enduring differences between City Hall and the incumbent political administration, it is not difficult to see why the municipality will almost always frequently find itself wedged between a proverbial rock and a hard place. What the state-run Chronicle had to say recently about the distressing circumstances of what would appear to be the falling apart of one of the Capital’s most historically important buildings is reflective of the shameful political cesspool in which our country finds itself. What all of this boils down to is that we have had to settle for a Georgetown municipality that has no substantive will of its own, possessed as it always is with a ‘political mission’ which, all too often, cuts across what is good/desirable for the country’s capital.
