UNC councillor kicked out chamber during heated meeting

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Po­lit­i­cal bac­cha­nal erupt­ed at the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion yes­ter­day, af­ter Deputy May­or Shankar Teelucks­ingh was es­cort­ed out of the cham­ber by po­lice dur­ing a Pub­lic Health Com­mit­tee meet­ing.

His re­moval fol­lowed a heat­ed ex­change be­tween Teelucks­ingh and the com­mit­tee’s chair­man, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) coun­cil­lor An­ton George.

In a video of the meet­ing, Teelucks­ingh is heard shout­ing and point­ing at George, ac­cus­ing him of be­ing un­fair to the burgess­es of Ce­dros, who had been com­plain­ing of clogged box drains for the past two months.

“Yeah, sus­pend me! Move the mo­tion,” Teelucks­ingh said.

George re­sponds: “You lis­ten to me. I am telling you for the very last time, with­draw your state­ments.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the meet­ing, George said the deputy may­or was dis­re­spect­ful to the chair dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion and re­fused to com­ply with in­struc­tions un­der the coun­cil’s stand­ing or­ders.

George ex­plained that while Teelucks­ingh was speak­ing, he be­gan hav­ing loud out­bursts and failed to ac­knowl­edge the au­thor­i­ty of the chair when cau­tioned. He said Sec­tion 28 of the stand­ing or­ders was read dur­ing the meet­ing, and mem­bers vot­ed for Teelucks­ingh to re­move him­self from the cham­ber to cool off. George not­ed the com­mit­tee chose not to sus­pend Teelucks­ingh for up to 21 or 40 days, which was an avail­able op­tion, but in­stead asked him to step out tem­porar­i­ly.

Teelucks­ingh, how­ev­er, claimed he was mak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion, on be­half of Ce­dros res­i­dents, about clogged drains that had gone un­at­tend­ed for near­ly two months when crosstalk be­gan from the oth­er side. He said he raised his voice to ques­tion why he was be­ing in­ter­rupt­ed and in­sist­ed he was rep­re­sent­ing his dis­trict. He claimed the chair­man moved di­rect­ly to in­voke the stand­ing or­ders with­out first call­ing a re­cess and a mo­tion was car­ried by PNM mem­bers to have him re­moved. He was sub­se­quent­ly es­cort­ed out by the po­lice.

Teelucks­ingh said he be­lieves the PNM is test­ing the wa­ters and at­tempt­ing to erode the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ po­si­tion with­in the cor­po­ra­tion. He con­firmed he was on­ly re­moved from the meet­ing and not sus­pend­ed from the coun­cil en­tire­ly.

Mean­while, May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo de­scribed the in­ci­dent as a “sad day” for the coun­cil, say­ing in his 20 years as a coun­cil­lor, he had nev­er wit­nessed such a de­vel­op­ment. He agreed that George had the au­thor­i­ty to re­move Teelucks­ingh be­cause the PNM now has the ma­jor­i­ty of votes in the coun­cil.

How­ev­er, Mayrhoo ac­cused the PNM of hi­jack­ing the UNC-led cor­po­ra­tion fol­low­ing the death of coun­cil­lor Ra­mona Vic­tor, who was mur­dered fol­low­ing a do­mes­tic dis­pute last No­vem­ber.

Mayrhoo said the bal­ance of pow­er shift­ed af­ter UNC al­der­man Vic­tor Roberts crossed the floor to the PNM, giv­ing the PNM sev­en seats to the UNC’s five. In 2024, UNC coun­cil­lor Ja­son Ali al­so crossed the floor to the PNM. Mayrhoo said if al­der­man Roberts had re­mained with the UNC, the coun­cil would have been split six-six, al­low­ing for a cast­ing vote by the may­or or com­mit­tee chair.

The may­or fur­ther called on Roberts to re­sign, ac­cus­ing him of open­ly sup­port­ing the PNM de­spite be­ing ap­point­ed as an al­der­man un­der the UNC. He al­so raised con­cerns about a let­ter Roberts re­port­ed­ly cir­cu­lat­ed, bear­ing the Coat of Arms and the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion lo­go, which was writ­ten to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, say­ing he has sought le­gal ad­vice on whether that con­sti­tut­ed a breach of pro­to­col, since the mat­ter was not dis­cussed or ap­proved by the coun­cil.

Mayrhoo said de­spite the nu­mer­i­cal dis­ad­van­tage, the PNM did not have the three-fourths ma­jor­i­ty re­quired un­der leg­is­la­tion to re­move him as may­or. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted the op­po­si­tion could block mo­tions brought for­ward by the UNC due to its ma­jor­i­ty.

Mayrhoo said the po­lit­i­cal stand­off comes as ten­sions re­main high with­in the cor­po­ra­tion, with lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in Au­gust next year.