I am overjoyed that many have seemingly experienced an epiphany

Jun 13, 2014 Letters

Dear Editor,
As far back as April 2009, I made public my decision to run for Mayor of the Capital City of Guyana. I did not at anytime then present my decision in accordance with the current Local Government Laws and rules governing how the Mayor of the nation’s municipalities are selected. I deliberately did so in order to send a message to the people of Georgetown that I consider them the primary decision makers on who should be their Mayor. At the time, and up to quite recently many scoffed at my expressed candidacy, often reminding me that the Mayor was not directly elected by the citizens. And even after severally explaining that I fully understood the legal construction behind the selection of a Mayor currently, and the structuring of my campaign was directly designed to challenge this dysfunctional system, the scoffing and reminders continued. We are kind of hard headed as a people sometimes.
I recently wrote a letter that was published in both the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News in which I clearly and unambiguously reiterated my position that I was running for Mayor of Georgetown, and provided an explanation as to why my campaign was thus structured. As I explained, quoting from my recent letter, “Yes, there is a nuance to my proclamation that I am running for Mayor, as opposed to seeking a seat on the City Council from which body, according to our local Government Rules, the Mayor is selected. I make this affirmation not only to illuminate the end goal of my political campaign, but I also wish to make clear my conviction that it is time for the Local Government Laws to be changed so that Chief Executives of municipalities are directly elected by the citizens of those localities. It is time for democracy to reach right down into the grass roots, and confer this kind or power upon the citizens of our Municipalities”. In plain and unadulterated language, as anyone can see, I made clear my objection to the current system in which the Mayor is selected, and my position that it should be changed allowing the citizens of Municipalities to directly elect the person who would be responsible for managing the affairs of the cities in which they resided. The structural message in my candidacy thus alerts the electorate to who they would putting in the executive seat in City Hall, when they place their mark next to a Candidate for the Independent Party.
Mr. Editor I am indeed overjoyed to witness today that many have seemingly experienced an epiphany with respect to how the Chief Executive of Municipalities are selected. I am pleased and honored that this is no longer a lonely path in which I am left to hew a passage through the partisan Political bureaucracies who have, over 5 decades or thereabouts, enjoyed the privilege of imposing their own selectorial whims on the citizens of Cities around the nation, in terms who is their Mayor. This is something that is very close to my activist breast, because it transfers an important aspect of democratic power from the hands of a few politicians, and distributes that power into the hands of citizens. It is when democracy is able to reach right down into the bowels of the grassroots, that the interest of citizens of the Republic will be better served.
Finally let me welcome aboard all those who are no longer heavily laden with the burden of being anachronistically acquiescent with the status quo, and are, in a manner of speaking, testing the temperature and depths of the political dialogue with their support of this change. Indeed it is good to see, and who knows, maybe, just maybe it might herald the beginning of something positive, something new. Maybe, just maybe we are approaching that point in our history when we can heed the message I paraphrase from Bob Marley’s Rastaman Vibration that:
Say we just can’t continue to live in that negative way,
If you know what I mean
Make way for the positive day,
Cause it’s a new day,
Yeah its a new time, and if it’s a new feeling,
that is a new sign
Oh, what a new day

Mark A. Benschop
Independent Party

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I am overjoyed that many have seemingly experienced an epiphany

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