Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo yes­ter­day in­struct­ed a Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Of­fi­cer to es­cort a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) al­der­man from a spe­cial statu­to­ry meet­ing of the Siparia Bor­ough Coun­cil, prompt­ing the oth­er PNM coun­cil­lors to walk out.

It was the sec­ond clash be­tween the may­or and PNM coun­cil­lors dur­ing a spe­cial statu­to­ry meet­ing, with the lat­est dis­pute cen­tring on whether de­ci­sions tak­en at the pre­vi­ous meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 8 were valid.

The PNM coun­cil­lors ar­gued that the de­ci­sions were negat­ed af­ter they walked out of that meet­ing, leav­ing the coun­cil with­out a quo­rum.

They re­lied on Stand­ing Or­der 8(3) in mak­ing their ob­jec­tion.

How­ev­er, the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary dis­agreed with the PNM’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ad­vised that the pre­vi­ous meet­ing was valid.

The Sep­tem­ber 8 meet­ing end­ed abrupt­ly af­ter the PNM coun­cil­lors ob­ject­ed to Mayrhoo ap­point­ing chair­men to 14 ad hoc com­mit­tees.

The coun­cil­lors ar­gued that the ap­point­ments should have been put to a vote, as had been done ear­li­er with the four Stand­ing Com­mit­tees.

With the PNM hav­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty with sev­en coun­cil­lors, as two UNC coun­cil­lors had crossed the floor, com­pared with the UNC’s five, its nom­i­nees were ap­point­ed to the Stand­ing Com­mit­tees.

Yes­ter­day’s spe­cial sit­ting had been called to deal with salary in­creas­es im­ple­ment­ed by the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment for dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers and oth­er fi­nan­cial mat­ters. Those mat­ters were suc­cess­ful­ly dealt with.

How­ev­er, Mayrhoo lat­er brought for­ward busi­ness re­lat­ing to the ap­point­ment of the chair­men of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tees, as well as the chair­men he had ap­point­ed to the 14 ad hoc com­mit­tees.

The PNM coun­cil­lors ob­ject­ed, main­tain­ing that those mat­ters could not stand be­cause there had been no quo­rum af­ter they walked out of the pre­vi­ous meet­ing.

PNM al­der­man Christo­pher Max Enci­nas then at­tempt­ed to speak, but Mayrhoo told him it was not his turn and in­struct­ed him to take his seat.

Enci­nas in­sist­ed, prompt­ing Mayrhoo to ask the of­fi­cer to es­cort him out­side.

Mayrhoo told Enci­nas to “take a five-minute break, then re­turn to the meet­ing.”

The PNM coun­cil­lors protest­ed and asked for a short break, but got up and left af­ter the may­or de­nied their re­quest.

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, Mayrhoo main­tained that a quo­rum was present when the com­mit­tee chair­men were ap­point­ed at the pre­vi­ous meet­ing and that those de­ci­sions there­fore stand.

“It is my un­der­stand­ing now that they want to change the chair­man of those com­mit­tees be­cause they are of the view that they will not be able to take the ad hoc com­mit­tees from us. To­day I took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­form them al­so that I have in­deed ap­point­ed the chair­man of the var­i­ous ad hoc com­mit­tees.”

He clar­i­fied that he did not sus­pend Enci­nas but asked him to “take a break be­cause he was be­ing rude to the chair.”

How­ev­er, he warned the burgess­es that the PNM coun­cil­lors have an agen­da.

“I fore­see here that the in­ten­tion of the PNM is to shut down this Cor­po­ra­tion be­cause of the fact that they have the con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty and we are one short of a quo­rum. They will hold us to that and they will not want to come to meet­ings and they are go­ing to shut it down.”

The PNM coun­cil­lors ve­he­ment­ly de­nied this.

Enci­nas said, “If it is that we have to come to meet­ings to deal with the peo­ple’s in­ter­ests, that is what we will do be­cause that is what we are man­dat­ed to do.”

Ac­cus­ing the may­or of “hi­jack­ing the process”, Enci­nas main­tained that the last meet­ing was in­valid be­cause they walked out, leav­ing no quo­rum.

“So what we ex­pect­ed is that a new meet­ing would have been called to deal with these com­mit­tees, be­cause in our opin­ion, where we dis­agreed with the may­or was in Sec­tion 8(3).”

He said the may­or al­so re­fused any dis­cus­sion on the mat­ter, adding, “It is his way or the high­way.”

Enci­nas said they would be seek­ing fur­ther ad­vice on their next step.