Councillors blast Linden Mayor over live stream of statutory meeting

A decision to test the possibilities of live streaming statutory meetings by Linden Mayor Carwyn Holland was met with unfavourable responses from Councillors within the municipality on Wednesday, with one storming out of the meeting and another threatening to leave.
The issue was brought to the attention of the Council by Councillor Lennox Gasper, who stood up some time into the meeting to express his dissatisfaction after learning that the meeting was being streamed live on social media site Facebook. This led to an uproar in the Council, as Councillors expressed shock and dissatisfaction over the incident, despite apologies by the Mayor, who noted that in fact the Council had already discussed the possibilities of going live with such meetings in 2017 and that the incident was just a test to ascertain if it would work. Later in the meeting, Councillor Leroy James, clearly upset, walked out after expressing his disapproval. Addressing the Council, Gasper maintained that the Council was unaware that it was being live streamed and referred to the action of the Mayor as disrespectful.
Gasper noted further that any decision of the Council with respect to broadcasting should be relayed to its Communication Committee, providing a means for the Chairman of that Committee to alert Councillors of the decision.
In response, however, Holland said a decision was made last November to commence streaming of meetings. He further indicated that he had made attempts to make the announcement earlier at Wednesday’s statutory metting, but was not allowed to do so by Gasper. He said a young man was actually testing to see if the streaming would work since the signal had been poor.
Gasper argued however, that the business of the Council is the public’s business and in that sense, the Linden public, since matters discussed at statutory meetings are either directly or indirectly related to Lindeners and not the rest of the world.
He further stressed that even Parliament is usually broadcasted first to the people of Guyana.
A back and forth then ensued between the two which led to Gasper requesting that the Mayor put his phone down and the live stream be cut off by Holland, since he said that the events of the Council were still being streamed.
The Mayor in turn denied that he was still recording as he turned off his phone.Councillor Deryck Collins then joined in to voice his concerns over the episode.
“If you want do something like that, tell the Council… Let us give you the consent… and if you’re going to do a test, we ain’t want it from you phone. Let everybody know what going on. This is not something for you,” he stressed.
Councillors then noted that they had been caught off guard and felt violated as Holland further apologised, maintaining that it was a test and it is the right of the Council to provide an opportunity for every Lindener to view the happenings of the Council.
Councillor Leroy James, prior to leaving, also expressed dissatisfaction over the situation and urged the Mayor to apologise, noting that he felt as though he was spying.
Meanwhile, Councillor Keeran Williams said while there is nothing in the Municipal Council Act 28:01 to dictate whether one can go live to the world in terms of the internal happenings of the Council, the sad part was that the issue was discussed and the Council did make a decision. He said he prefers not to be part of the process where the Council makes a decision where any member goes against it, and that he was prepared to leave the meeting and any other meeting, should another issue of similar nature arise.
“I thought everyone remembered that we were going to go live, my apologies over this,” Holland continued.