Shal­iza Has­sanali

Sev­er­al meet­ings by Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (ABC) coun­cil­lors to quell an on-go­ing "war" be­tween its may­or and the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ari­ma have failed to yield re­sults.May­or Ghas­san Youseph said on Thurs­day that since his in­stal­la­tion in 2010, he has been at log­ger­heads with MP Rodger Samuel, who al­leged­ly told him he want­ed to be prime min­is­ter of Ari­ma.Both Samuel and Youseph are mem­bers of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP).

The ABC is al­so COP-con­trolled. This Fri­day, all 14 cor­po­ra­tions will be dis­solved.The in­fight­ing comes days af­ter Samuel had threat­ened to re­sign from the COP.Youseph said that sev­er­al at­tempts have been made to con­trol him, which he will not tol­er­ate."That is a prob­lem. How can you solve that?"Youseph said sev­er­al plans by the ABC to de­vel­op Ari­ma has been met with stum­bling blocks. He spoke about the Ari­ma Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex which was sup­posed to have been built on the same site of the Ari­ma Town Hall.

How­ev­er, the com­plex nev­er got off the ground af­ter Samuel told him that five acres was need­ed for the con­struc­tion of the com­plex."Coun­cil told him we don't need five acres. Even­tu­al­ly that fell flat."Youseph said they al­so fought over the up­grade of the Lar­ry Gomes en­clo­sure and the Ari­ma Velo­drome. Samuel, Youseph said, want­ed to up­grade the en­clo­sure, while Youseph felt re­pairs to the velo­drome was a pri­or­i­ty.

Youseph said Samuel nev­er con­sult­ed the coun­cil con­cern­ing the en­clo­sure. The lands be­long to the cor­po­ra­tion. Re­cent­ly, Youseph said, he heard Samuel an­nounce that ten­ders were out for the en­clo­sure."When I in­quired what he was go­ing to do he got up­set about that."Youseph said Samuel had planned to con­struct a road­way and car park on the en­clo­sure, which would not have ben­e­fit­ted burgess­es."As far as I am con­cerned, he (Samuel) has con­trol­ling ten­den­cies that make it very dif­fi­cult."

Last De­cem­ber, Youseph said one of his coun­cil­lors want­ed to in­vite the Min­istry of Health to a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the pro­posed Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal. The coun­cil, Youseph said, passed a mo­tion to hold the con­sul­ta­tion. Youseph said Samuel did not agree with the pro­pos­al and every­thing fell by the way­side.The ABC al­so had a pro­posed site for the Ari­ma mar­ket but "some­body else had a dif­fer­ent pro­pos­al."

Youseph said while the pulling and tug­ging con­tin­ues, burgess­es and cit­i­zens were suf­fer­ing for lack of ameni­ties and in­fra­struc­ture."We've had enough prob­lems with trib­al pol­i­tics." Youseph said the COP has to do a lot of cleans­ing.

Coun­cil­lor: COP not lead­ing ef­fec­tive­ly

Coun­cil­lor for Cal­vary Wayne Bertrand said the COP had failed to lead ef­fec­tive­ly and there were too many squab­bles with­in the par­ty. Bertrand said the war be­tween both men should have been nipped in the bud from ear­ly."Dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion should have been tak­en."He said sev­er­al coun­cil meet­ings for them to work things out failed mis­er­ably."They have to get their act to­geth­er," Bertrand said.

On Fri­day, COP coun­cil­lor for Ari­ma Cen­tral Clin­ton Jen­nings joined Jack Warn­er's In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty at a pub­lic meet­ing in Cunu­pia.In an in­ter­view hours be­fore he de­fect­ed, Jen­nings said the rift in the COP and the ABC con­tin­ues to be "a sore that was left un­treat­ed. It was al­lowed to fes­ter."

Ari­ma North East coun­cil­lor and deputy may­or Pa­tri­cia Metivi­er said even though the meet­ings and dis­cus­sions with the coun­cil failed to bring re­sults, she ap­pealed to both men to put aside their dif­fer­ences and get down to the busi­ness at hand.