Can Carol Sooba save the PPP?

Jun 27, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

If there is any citizen living in the land today who is over-zealous over the current elephant dung that sits on top the horseshoe table of the City Council, it is the former Town Clerk, Carol Sooba. Sooba faced quotidian harassment from the City Council. There was a no-confidence motion passed against her. There were daily outpourings of venom against her by the Council. Royston King took her to court. The very King and Chase-Green who have seized vendors’ goods and are chasing the vendors all over Georgetown as if they are animals, got these vendors to picket Sooba.
During the picket, the vendors shouted nasty things about Sooba. The City Council under Hamilton Green and Chase-Green (are they related?) locked Sooba out of her office. It was the City Constabulary that responded to a request from Sooba to unlock her office door. Sooba is gone. She was the very first casualty of the Coalition Government. The Ministry of Communities rescinded Sooba’s appointment. At the meeting to demand her resignation, the scene was chaotic. Councillors pulled the table away from Sooba and even took away her seat.
Today, Sooba is overflowing with political capital. She has been catapulted into the position of strategic general of the PPP ready to direct her troops. It is impossible for Sooba not to be a lightning rod for the PPP, should she take to the campaign trail. Her rhetoric will be deadly persuasive. All Sooba has to do is cite the egregious and horrible balance sheet of Royston King and Chase-Green since April. Since April means since the Local Government Election. It means that just under three months, King and Chase-Green have been far more incompetent in their respective administrative capacities and more oppressive to Georgetowners than Sooba has ever been.

Patricia Chase-Green

Royston King

Carol Sooba

Using her demagoguery to drive home her point, all she has to tell her audience is that the very King and Chase-Green have been behind her ouster, but look at what they are doing now to Georgetown. On the campaign trail, Sooba should share out photographs of the area on East Street between New Market and Middle Streets. The City Council assigned it to an investor to implement a paid parking system. Done without consultation with the Georgetown Hospital and the residents of East Street, the project is a repugnant failure.
The only persons who use that fee-paying area are the homeless people who have taken up residence in the empty lot that is always empty because no one is paying to park there. The simple fact is King and Chase-Green and the Coalition will have no answer for Sooba’s inexorability. Carol Sooba may be the trump card for the PPP in the months and years to come. Will they use her? It is doubtful Sooba can use her water-proof descriptions to capture the imagination of Georgetowners because of race. That is sad. Georgetowners will see her as part of the PPP and they have bitter memories of what the PPP did to them. But Georgetowners have to face the fact – King and Chase-Green have been more oppressive than Soba when she was the Town Clerk.
It is not only that King and Chase-Green have been insensitive, arrogant, incompetent and anti-working class but they have edged out the PPP cadre, Neil Kumar for facetiousness and comedy. It was PPP Parliamentarian, Neil Kumar who made the entire Guyana laugh when he described the states we call the ABC countries as Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Every school boy knows that in Guyana the ABC countries that are the three closest historically to Guyana are America, Britain and Canada. Kumar again put his foot in his mouth when he told a press conference that he cannot open the Colgrain pool to the public because people have to learn they must shower first before they swim
I will leave it up to readers to decide if Chase-Green and King outdid Kumar. When asked if he sought other bids for the parking meter investment, King said the Council would not have received a better deal. That is hilarity that has no match except, perhaps Kumar. Then Chase-Green said that how can you criticize an investor by looking him up at Google. Now that is pretty silly. Maybe only Chase-Green doesn’t know that Google is one of the largest companies in the world and provides information on almost anything that exists on Planet Earth. What went through the mind of Carol Sooba when she saw those “Kumarish” jokes from King and Chase-Green? Guyana is a sad place but the non-stop comedy has always been good for keeping Guyanese alive.

4 thoughts on “Can Carol Sooba save the PPP?”

Ashley Singh June 27, 2016 at 6:44 am

Freddie, I just cannot believe it.
RLSG June 27, 2016 at 8:29 am

Party partisanship will be the death of Guyana … well said Freddie.
Raj June 27, 2016 at 1:28 pm

Looking back we miss the things we could not imagine would happen with change!
bl_666 June 27, 2016 at 3:26 pm

The poor man is fully occupied “believing” things are the right things to do, “intending to do” things, and “not intending to do” other things, to actually do anything.