Royston King will destroy the careers of Granger and Nagamootoo

Sep 08, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Since the APNU+AFC government came into power, the Town Clerk, Royston King has been acting in a power drunk manner. The question is why? My answer is that he feels he has protection from the Government. Another question becomes relevant. Is the central administration offering a canopy to King for the abominable violations he has been committing since Carol Sooba demitted office?
My answer is yes, and it has to do with the PNC party. The key figure in this power madness is the Mayor, Patricia Chase Green. Ms. Chase-Green just won a seat on the PNC’s central executive. No doubt there were PNC stalwarts who facilitated her election. Or was it a selection?
Someone is protecting King, because King has become an unruly king. The violations keep stacking up. Sooner rather than later, King is going to destroy the careers of David Granger and Moses Nagamootoo. An enumeration of King’s kingly excesses makes for disgusting reading.
King cordoned off the avenue between the two sections of East Street between Middle and New Market Streets, made it into a paid car park, and began charging people $500 an hour and $200 every hour after. The staff at the Georgetown Hospital and the residents in the area rejected King’s imposition. The parking lot is now a graveyard.
Next, the vendors on Merriman Mall between Orange Walk and Cummings Street were evicted. Protest allowed them back in, but their stalls were reduced to a size smaller than a dog kennel. Next, the Stabroek Market vendors were unceremoniously evicted. Then King moved to clear the entire Stabroek Square. Fortunately, the photographer who operates a service there sought and got a court order restraining King.
Next, the Beharry Group of Companies complained that King has held up the processing of their permit to house the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. Next, King and his sidekick signed a parking meter contract that was so disgraceful and sickening that King and the Mayor should have been banished from public office for life.
This has to be the most ill-shaped, opaque and silly contract ever signed between two entities. The contract is to run for 49 years. It cannot be cancelled unless the investor is compensated by 80 percent of what he should have earned for the 49 years. Yet against this backdrop, King remains as Town Clerk, accepted by an elected City Council and the Mayor won election last week to the central executive of the party led by President David Granger.
Next, the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) accused King of granting a permit to a developer in violation of a court order and against the decision of the CH&PA. Next, without adequate notice, King removed over one hundred vendors who for years plied their trade on that spot.
But here is the thing. The Granger/Nagamootoo regime told public servants the State can only give a ten percent salary increase to lower income public servants because of constraints of central funds. Against this limited Treasury, it is alright for King to put over one hundred small earners out of their income. Two questions need to be asked of the Prime Minister and the President. Why is an unelected city official allowed to abuse power like that when the Cabinet has jurisdiction to curtail his kingly madness?
The Cabinet, in the form of the Minister of Communities, in the absence of the Local Government Commission, can reverse many of King’s authoritarian decisions. What this refusal by central government means is that the President, Prime Minister and Minister of Communities do not see that what King is doing is against the interest and future of poor people, and against the fundamental principles of post-PPP Guyana. It is reckless and irresponsible politics on the part of both city and central governments to allow the power madness of King to roam over the city of Georgetown
How can the credibility of Granger, Nagamootoo and Minister Bulkan survive this power intoxication of Royston King? How can the APNU+AFC government condone what King is doing, yet have the moral barefacedness to criticize the PPP’s excesses when that party was in power?
What Granger, Nagamootoo and Bulkan have failed to see is that they are damaging their party’s chances in 2020, more so Bulkan. It is doubtful that Granger and Nagamootoo will contest general elections in 2020. Maybe Bulkan wouldn’t either. Minister Bulkan and Prime Minister Nagamootoo have been my friends for a very long time. But I simply cannot remain silent at their lack of recognition of the mistreatment of the poor and powerless in my country.

6 thoughts on “Royston King will destroy the careers of Granger and Nagamootoo”

george wiltshire September 8, 2016 at 6:08 am

Thank you Freddie, you have said it for us. We are concerned that these men who have a chance to change Guyana for the better can remain silent in the face of such wanton display of irrationality.
1. casada11 September 8, 2016 at 12:06 pm
  
  I must commend Freddy for being that smart for not ever trying to say some thing remotely close to what he has written here today during the Hamilton Greene era in City Hall. City Hall has and may forever be in the clutches of the PNC/APNU, even as hard as the PPP/C administration tries to create neutrality within the functioning body things never changes, what Freddy is actually saying here is that, we may forever have to contend with a tattered city, under such precedence.
  1. Gtloyal September 11, 2016 at 3:42 pm
    
    Thank goodness the ppp doesn’t get their way for we will be worst off. As you can see, I criticize some of our present leaders in a post above because I can see them tolerating and, I perceive, participating in not so honest acts. However, as wrong as they may be, their misdeeds are nothing when compared to what we have seen done by the PPP during the last decades. Neutrality? Do politicians know what that is?
Gtloyal September 8, 2016 at 6:42 am

Granger, Nagamootoo, Bulkan and some others are not seeing anything wrong because they only have eyes to see what they can get this “go around” which is undoubtedly their last.
The rest is … Guyanese mentality.
Guyanese will talk and talk and talk about King but no one will do anything to stop him.
carl veecock September 8, 2016 at 10:46 am

Freddie?
You are soooo right!
But who will read and listen?
Definitely not those is authority

It is amazing how blind those in authority can be or maybe they have some difficulty in analysing and parsing as they used to do in their school days.
Makes a stronger case for YOUTH IN GOVERNMENT for these “oldies” seem to have lost their sense of reason.

King is definitely ‘a bull in a china shop’
The Lady Mayor is ‘a high school teenager’
If Bulkan cannot control King, it is very simple…send him packing!
Bulkan has a tough job, but it is time that he asserts himself and show who is the real boss.

Stay with this matter Freddie and press on with more and more articles on it.
Keith Williams September 8, 2016 at 3:58 pm

This coalition regime either has to be the most idiotic in these parts, or they have resigned themselves to a one term stint and really do not care how their constituents feel about the atrocities that comes.