The lessons of the anti-parking meter protest

Mar 17, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The Government has announced its recommendation to City Council that the parking meter contract be suspended for three months. Why three months is a mystery. Even if you are a fanatical supporter of this government, you would be hard-pressed to deny it has mysterious ways of doing things.
A diversion is necessary; the President and other ministers keep saying that they cannot interfere with the City Council governance because City Council is independent.
I cannot find a law to that effect, but here is where things get complicated. I read the powers of the Local Government Commission (LGC) and they are near to being inexhaustible. The LGC has total jurisdiction over every level of municipal operation – from NDC to Mayorship. The LGC even has the authority to hire and fire. The LGC is being held up by a dispute between Government and opposition. Once that is resolved, the Georgetown City Council comes under the ambit of the LGC.
Here is where I am confused and I would welcome an explanation. According to the President, City Hall is independent and thus government cannot give to it edicts. But is it not factual that such independence would be removed when the LGC comes into being, because the LGC has authority over every town council in Guyana? My question to the President is if as it presently stands, City Hall is not subordinate to central government then, if City Hall is subordinate to the LGC, where then is its independence?
What is my opinion?
I do not think there is any law that prevents central power from intervening with City Hall to stop an egregious policy from harming the capital. What I find amazing is that more than a dozen lawyers are involved in the anti-parking meter activities, but not one sees the need to pen a letter explaining to Georgetowners if there is a specific law that insulates City Hall from the reaches of Government.
Sherod Duncan studied law. The AFC has come out against the parking meters, yet none of the lawyers from the AFC can tell us about the existence of this law. But then again this is Guyana, where Faust’s covenant with the Devil is a baby party compared to existence in this wasteland.
Now for the lessons of the protest. The weekly picket has been an eye-opener in terms of the history of struggle in Guyana. The weekly picket is a multi-class formation that cuts across age, race, religion and class divisions. The Portuguese community is well represented. So are the young Indian and African white collar workers. The most manifest dimension of these demonstrations is the middle class content. One has to believe that the effect scared the Coalition Government.
The first to see the light was the AFC. The AFC knew their supporters were well represented in that protest movement. Fearing a loss of such a fulcrum, the AFC bolted from APNU. All that jazz that the AFC has been spouting since June 2015, that the Coalition is solidified and that the AFC cannot be seen to be criticizing its partner in power, turned to survival mode.
The AFC saw what was happening every Thursday outside City Hall. Close friends of the AFC leadership are in the picket line, including a person to whom the AFC offered the Ministry of the Environment.
APNU’s leadership has discovered what its AFC partner already had – fear of losing support. This explains the sudden transformation. What is sad about all these shenanigans is the role of the middle class in those weekly pickets. If those folks had zoomed in long ago during the rule of the PPP and since May 2015 in the reign of the Coalition, on unacceptable practices, maybe this country would have reclaimed some of its lost freedoms.
Sadly and most painfully, if the parking meters go, so will the voices of those middle class folks. They would have achieved their objective and the poor and powerless, the victimized, the brutalized, will have to endure their torture and suffering. I know those middle class folks. They are contemptuous of working class bandwagons. They will not join any effort if the sufferers are poor country folks and the working class in general.
The radical middle class died when Walter Rodney died. But the anti-parking pickets were priceless, and I’m glad that I joined. I only missed two – one due to rain and one to the cold. I don’t disagree with the rise of parking meters. We need them, but not in the form we have them, and not with that kind of cost. I guess the struggle continues!

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