AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Two women are at the helm of the Bor­ough of Diego Mar­tin as Ake­li­ah Glas­gow is now the Bor­ough’s first may­or, while Va­liesha Sook­dar will deputise.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s his­toric mo­ment at the Bagatelle Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, there were some slight hic­cups with the elec­tion process hap­pen­ing twice to the be­muse­ment of those in at­ten­dance, as it seemed as if both the Coun­cil and the Bor­ough’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer were un­sure of the pro­to­col to be fol­lowed. This hap­pened un­der the watch­ful eye of the Prime Min­is­ter who sat in the au­di­ence.

But they fig­ured it out even­tu­al­ly and af­ter be­ing in­stalled with what is now the may­or’s chain, Glas­gow gave her first of­fi­cial ad­dress where she stat­ed that pub­lic ser­vice is part of her fam­i­ly’s her­itage.

“For me, ser­vice runs deep in my blood. My grand­moth­er Ivy Ed­wards who was part of the PNM, served tire­less­ly for the bet­ter­ment of our com­mu­ni­ty, her ded­i­ca­tion and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment in­spired me to con­tin­ue her lega­cy. A lega­cy hand­ed down by my moth­er Francine Ed­wards who has served the PNM and the peo­ple of Diego Mar­tin West since the days she could walk and talk,” Glas­gow said.

To her coun­cil­lors, May­or Glas­gow called for a unit­ed ap­proach to en­sur­ing im­prove­ments to the qual­i­ty of life for Diego Mar­tin res­i­dents. She al­so an­nounced that the first coun­cil meet­ing will be on Sep­tem­ber 7 at “9 am sharp.”

Fi­nance Min­is­ter and Diego Mar­tin North/East MP, Colm Im­bert ac­knowl­edged what he called the “woman pow­er” in the new bor­ough.

“Not just the may­or and deputy may­or but the men are out­num­bered nine to five on this coun­cil, we ex­pect great things from you ladies,” Im­bert re­marked.

Glas­gow in her speech al­so paid homage to the women in the bor­ough who in­flu­enced her.

“As I took the oath to­day, I was re­mind­ed of the re­mark­able women that stood at this same podi­um be­fore me, Ho­n­ourable Bridgid Anisette-George, Miss Kathy Christo­pher and Mrs Su­san Hong, all wives, all moth­ers, all ser­vant lead­ers,” Glas­gow said.

Al­der­men were al­so sworn in. In ad­di­tion to Glas­gow and Sook­dar, Car­los Wal­dron was one of the three al­der­men for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance earned one of the al­der­men po­si­tions by virtue of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion and that po­si­tion went to Paul Daniel-Na­hous.

But the coun­cil­lors re­ceived some home­work yes­ter­day from the Prime Min­is­ter. In ad­dress­ing them, Dr Kei­th Row­ley said many peo­ple sought elect­ed of­fice with­out un­der­stand­ing the rules that gov­ern their du­ties. He urged the Diego Mar­tin coun­cil not to fol­low suit.

“Read, read the laws, read the in­struc­tions and reg­u­la­tions that gov­ern your con­duct, you will be amazed at how many peo­ple take of­fice, ex­e­cut­ing au­thor­i­ty and nev­er read the doc­u­ments un­der which the au­thor­i­ty is made by the Par­lia­ment. How many coun­cil­lors you know that would have read the act that ap­plies to lo­cal gov­ern­ment?” the Prime Min­is­ter asked.

He then laid down a chal­lenge.

“We are now at the end of an elec­tion and the be­gin­ning of a four-year term in the con­text of a cam­paign is­sue of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, how many of you have read that doc­u­ment? Go and read it, learn it, un­der­stand it, be an ex­pert in it and then you will be use­ful at that ta­ble,” the Prime Min­is­ter urged.

Tak­ing a slight de­par­ture from tra­di­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter read the Bor­ough’s vi­sion and mis­sion state­ments.

“If you don’t know the peo­ple you are serv­ing and you don’t know what is go­ing on in the cor­po­ra­tion, you will not be able to pro­vide any as­sis­tance to any­body and if you talk about an ef­fi­cient man­ner through com­pe­tence, high mo­ti­va­tion and in­no­v­a­tive ac­tion, start with your­self,” Row­ley ad­vised.

He al­so spoke di­rect­ly to May­or Glas­gow and urged her to use sev­er­al new com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres in Diego Mar­tin to fa­cil­i­tate town hall style meet­ings with her burgess­es to in­form them of how the bor­ough’s mon­ey is be­ing spent.

Sigler Jack, who yes­ter­day hand­ed over con­trol of the cor­po­ra­tion to May­or Glas­gow, said a few words of farewell and wished his suc­ces­sor all the best.