Mark Benschop is dishonest and deceitful

Mar 01, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Mark Benschop is running a politically dishonest campaign. His logo says, “Team Benschop for Mayor,” when he is actually running as a councilor.  Any how you parse the logo it amounts to intellectual dishonesty. Mark cannot run in the Local Government Elections (LGE) for Mayor, neither can any in his team run for mayor. Mark and all his team members must first contest as councilors and win as councilors and then the different councilors from all the constituencies, collectively (all 30 of them), will vote for a person to be Mayor. So when Mark continues to use his misleading logo, he is behaving in the way the average politician behaves; which behavior has caused many to reject politicians as liars and tricksters.
Mark is single handedly responsible for the misnomer that the voters in the LEG will determine the Mayor, yet he continues to perpetuate that lie despite the clarion call for him to cease. If team Benschop wants to be honest, all they have to is replace the word ‘Mayor’ in their logo with the correct word ‘Councilor’ and the logo would then be both politically and ethically correct. But team Benschop will never make that timely and conscionable correction, because it is obvious that they are more interested in winning than in being honest. And to think that I admired Mark who fought so hard to remove a government that he claimed was dishonest in their dealings.
Further, Mark thinks that the current Mayor and City Council is behaving in shady ways and he is even calling for accountability and transparency. Yet he continues to run a campaign that is steeped in deceit and misinformation.
The reason team Benschop is using that logo with the word Mayor in it, is because when a person goes into the voting booth in any constituency they will think that they are voting for Mark, as Mayor and not the local representative per se. So rather than the competence of the individual, local, councilors being scrutinized, team Benschop is getting a free ride on the popularity of Mark. Let me haste to say that what Mark and his team are doing by falsifying their campaign, is political genius. No doubt this twisted strategy was designed to win Mark many votes and it might even get him close to the Mayoral position.
But what it also shows is that Mark is the consummate politician who has surrounded himself with like-minded thinkers. It also shows what kind of a person Mark is and what tactics he will employ to govern, should he win as Councilor and get the Mayorship. I also saw that Mr. Sherrod Duncan of the APNU/AFC has decided to challenge Mr. Nigel Huge on a statement the latter made. Mr. Huge has stated emphatically that the central Government should not contest in the LGE. One needs to be reminded that Mr. Huges forms an integral part of the AFC party and is well respected as an objective and critical thinker. One would correctly surmise that when he noted his objections to the coalition participating in the LGE, Nigel was not being trite or flippant. He would have first examined the realities and objectives of the Local Government and its purpose and he would have spoken out of concern for the maintenance of its integrity.Like Mr. Huges, I too think that it is a blatant conflict of interest for the central government to want to lead the local government. Notwithstanding that it was this current government who instituted and passed a bill decentralizing the management of the Local Government. So I am very surprised that Mr. Duncan would want to challenge Mr. Huges for making a candid and noteworthy observation.
It is very obvious that Mr. Duncan is hoping that the prevailing popularity of the APNU/AFC coalition will catapult him into the Councilor’s seat.  However, the real test of his personal popularity would have been realized if he had been man enough to contest, like me, as an independent. Duncan’s missive against Nigel is a desperate shot across the bow. He knows full well that Nigel is correct in his call for the central government to pull out of the LGE.
Editor, what is coincidental about both Mr. Benschop and Mr. Duncan is that they are both vying for the same Councilor’s seat in District #14. The word on the street is that one of them is likely to win. The M&CC will therefore have as a Councilor from that District, one who has no problem with falsifying the truth to win at all cost, or one who’s allegiance is to the central government and not his constituents.  Either way, the system is being played and made a mockery of.
Wendell Jeffrey, Pastor
Independent Candidate
Wortmanville/Work-en-Rust, District #8

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