The con­trari­ness of gov­er­nance ex­pe­ri­enced in re­cent times at the lev­el of cen­tral gov­ern­ment seems to have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed what is hap­pen­ing at the lo­cal lev­el, in par­tic­u­lar, the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion. How could the prop­er­ty of the cap­i­tal city and a ma­jor his­tor­i­cal arte­fact at that, the Lapey­rouse Ceme­tery wall, be in the process of be­ing plas­tered over with­out the knowl­edge of the may­or of the city, Louis Lee Sing?

More­over, the may­or says he is not aware who gave the in­struc­tions to plas­ter the out­er wall of the ceme­tery and where the re­sources have come from to do the job-which can­not be cheap. Nev­er­the­less, the plas­ter­ing of the wall was go­ing ahead with­out let or hin­drance up un­til Tues­day.

The ques­tion must be asked, who is in charge of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion? Are there two ad­min­is­tra­tions op­er­at­ing in the city cor­po­ra­tion, one led and con­trolled by May­or Lee Sing, the oth­er the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of a cadre of ad­min­is­tra­tors in City Hall?

Fur­ther, there must be some con­cern as to whether there are po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions to the plas­ter­ing. An elec­tion sea­son, with lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions sched­uled for next year, pro­duces mad­ness be­yond nor­mal com­pre­hen­sion. With the City Cor­po­ra­tion count­ing every pen­ny, and con­tend­ing that the needs of the city are not be­ing ad­e­quate­ly fund­ed by the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, where are these re­sources com­ing from?

Apart from the ab­solute ab­sur­di­ty of some­thing like this hap­pen­ing out­side of the knowl­edge of the may­or and his cor­po­ra­tion, what the coun­try is wit­ness­ing is the plas­ter­ing over of an his­toric wall, built from a rare lo­cal blue lime­stone. To make the project even more in­tol­er­a­ble, the wall's rich tex­ture is be­ing cov­ered with a non­de­script sur­face of ce­ment mor­tar.

This can on­ly be the work of some un­en­light­ened philis­tine, dull to the his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al val­ue of the Lapey­rouse wall, which is said to have been there in its orig­i­nal form for al­most 200 years.

In­stead of de­fac­ing and oblit­er­at­ing arte­facts such as the Lapey­rouse wall, the Unit­ed Na­tions Ed­u­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion has been deem­ing arte­facts like this World Her­itage sites and hav­ing gov­ern­ments take steps pre­serve them for the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of gen­er­a­tions to come.

Yet, out of the blue, and seem­ing­ly with­out the ap­proval of the gov­ern­men­tal agency with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for its main­te­nance and preser­va­tion, Lapey­rouse Ceme­tery wall is be­ing des­e­crat­ed in such an ig­no­rant and vul­gar man­ner.

There must be a fear, how­ev­er, that al­ready much dam­age may have been done to the wall which could prove to ir­repara­ble. To re­turn the wall to its orig­i­nal state, chis­elling the mor­tar may cause some dam­age to the blue lime­stone be­low. There must al­so be ques­tions over the abil­i­ty of the wall to with­stand the blunt force of pow­er drills.

With his flair for the dra­mat­ic, May­or Lee Sing is threat­en­ing to as­sem­ble his coun­cil­lors and al­der­men to re­pair the dam­age by per­son­al­ly chis­elling off the of­fend­ing plas­ter. Hope­ful­ly it will not come to that.

Mean­while, those who are ap­point­ed to run the city on be­half of its cit­i­zens ap­pear to need ed­u­cat­ing. They are charged with pre­serv­ing the best of the city, in­clud­ing its built her­itage, not van­dal­is­ing it. If the keep­ers of the city do not grasp that fun­da­men­tal is­sue, what chance does it stand?

Mr Lee Sing him­self is re­spon­si­ble for the ad­di­tion of an ex­tra storey atop City Hall, which orig­i­nal­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed a pitched roof com­plete­ly out of char­ac­ter for the build­ing. The may­or has re­port­ed­ly been per­suad­ed to al­ter that plan, but the con­ser­va­tion mes­sage does not yet ap­pear to have trick­led down from his of­fice to the rest of City Hall.