City Hall defers ‘No-confidence motion’ against Mayor Green

Apr 19, 2011 News

An attempt to move a no-confidence motion against City Mayor Hamilton Green yesterday was deferred to the next sitting of the Mayor and City Councillors of Georgetown statutory meeting.
The motion was moved by Councillor Gwen McGowan-French who had requested that the standing order be suspended to facilitate the motion. It was seconded by Councillor Patricia Chase-Green.
However the process was not executed due to an interjection by the Mayor who pointed out that there was an agenda to be followed. He invited newly appointed Town Clerk, Yonette Pluck-Cort, to outline the procedure on which basis a standing order can be suspended.
The Town Clerk then said that based on section 58 (4) of the Municipal and District Councils Act a motion to suspend standing orders may be made without notice and shall be voted upon without debate, but no such motion shall be passed except upon the vote of a majority of at least two-thirds councillors present and voting.
She pointed out though that the motion was not placed on yesterday’s agenda because the agenda was in fact one of a reconvened statutory meeting. “The next meeting will be until next Tuesday and the motion will be placed then,” Pluck-Cort noted.
According to Councillor Chase-Green, the absence of the no-confidence motion on the agenda yesterday was in fact surprising since she had brought it to the attention of the Town Clerk, Yonette Pluck-Cort, since last week Thursday.
She recounted that it was the same day too that she learned that the matter had reached the office of Minister, Kellawan Lall, under whose purview the municipality falls. “By 10am (10:00 hours) the same day, the Minister was questioned about the motion…
“At the time when a letter was delivered to me about a reconvening of the meeting the motion was in possession of the office of the Town Clerk and there are always addenda to our agenda so there was nothing strange about the motion; it was there in time.” Minister Lall had stated, too, that he had no problem if councillors had chosen to go ahead with the motion.
But according to Deputy Mayor Robert Williams, the motion was of such a nature that it required in-depth examination and therefore should be deferred to the next statutory, a move which was supported by Councillor McGowan-French.
The no-confidence motion had spawned from the failure on the part of the Mayor to enforce an injunction to have Pluck-Cort removed from the chair of Town Clerk and allow council-elected Town Clerk, Royston King, to take up the reins of the top council office.
The injunction was filed by councillors McGowan-French and Ranwell Jordan and was granted by Justice Diana Insanally in the High Court. According to the court order Pluck-Cort is required to show cause why she should not be prohibited from acting as and/or exercising the powers of the Office of Town Clerk as her actions are “ultra vires, null and void.”
She has until May 16 next to address the matter when it will be heard in Bail Court. A memorandum stamped by the Supreme Court Judicature of Guyana stated that should Pluck-Cort “neglect to obey this order by the time herein limited you will be liable to process of execution in the purposes of compelling you to obey the same order.”
However, even in light of the court order, Minister Lall on Friday last opted to install Pluck-Cort as the substantive Town Clerk of the city, highlighting his expectation that some normalcy will return with this move.

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