If you think that this is close to being true then we have sunk even further than I had thought….
I look at our local political overlords and often think that they look and act like thugs in suits.
Now read the following and, in your mind, place names where they should be – let us know in the comments:
Newly elected Councillor rents a swanky pad.
In his/her arrogance he fails to meet the rental obligations.
Said Councillor is kicked out by a landlord who owns more than one property in the city.
This ‘slight’ against the Councillor bubbles and bubbles for a couple of years until a ‘dish best served cold’ presents itself.
Landlord has fallen behind in service payments due to a combination of factors – mainly to do with the lack of service delivery driving tourists away from the City.
Councillor is now on the Mayco and sees that his former landlord is behind in payments.
Landlord is cash strapped, very ill, out of the city or a combination of.
Councillor influences his cronies to:
- Cut off electricity.
- Return later and remove electricity cables
What happens?
- Tenants move out.
- Homeless move in.
- Municipality hands over account to legal firm one.
- Municipality moves against landlord and sells one or more of the landlord’s properties in execution via legal firm two that has close ties to the Councillor.
- Before legal firm two settles the landlord’s outstanding debt, the debt is written off – again through the influence of the Councillor.
QUESTIONS:
- Has the Councillor overstepped the mark?
- Is this corruption?
- And, more importantly, what happened to the money collected from the sale in execution? Did the municipality account for that? Did the money get paid to the municipality? Where is the money now?
And today we have learned another lesson – using your elected influence to personally NAIL someone that you THINK did you a wrong in the past is corruption and not in the spirit of the law.
