Williams slams approach to selection of KSAMC committee members

By Halshane Burke   

 

Deputy Mayor of Kingston Delroy Williams has slammed the approach taken by the new Mayor in committee assignments.

 

Chairman of the Kingston and St. Andrew Municipal Corporation, the PNP's Andrew Swaby, has apparently gone against convention in how members of committees are apportioned.

 

The KSAMC is evenly split between the JLP and the PNP with each side have 20 councillors a piece.

 

The chairmanship went to the PNP based on the party with the most votes cast in the 40 divisions, with the post of deputy residing with the JLP.

 

Mr. Williams says the approach to the assignments fail to reflect the electoral results and by extension the will of the people for bipartisanship, thus undermining the principles of transparency, cooperation and accountability.

 

The Deputy Mayor says the move to abandon the tradition of having all members sitting on critical committees is a retrograde step. 

 

"I can't understand why we would want to remove elected representatives from those committees, it it's only just to gain a political advantage in terms of ensuring that they're comfortable with a majority of votes. I'm saying that I don't think we should make critical decisions like this, because in my estimation, the people are represented on these committees and have representation on these committees through their elected representatives. And these are critical committees. If you have to take a vote on a particular matter, you still have the casting vote. So there is no gridlock...in governance," he insisted. 

 

The deputy mayor has called for Mayor Swaby to rethink the approach and abide by the established convention.