UDP Mayor Zenaida Moya remains under fire tonight and if her inter-party opponents have their way, the heat’s only going to intensify over the next few days. This is the situation: the information we told you about last night regarding her unapproved salary of $108,000 a year was unearthed in an investigation into salaries at the council. That investigation is being done by the Ministry of Local Government as part of an overall audit of the council. From what we’ve been able to gather, the information was mass-leaked to the press from sources inside the government.
And those forces continue to work against the Mayor. Tomorrow, the Ministry of Local Government has called all the councilors, the Mayor and the City Administrator to a meeting to discuss that report on salaries. The position of the majority of the councilors is expected to be that the salary of $108,000 a year was not approved by or known to the council. The Ministry of Local Government sent its auditors into the council last week.
All this is coming to a boil with days to go before the mayoral convention. The fact is that the UDP, from the leadership, right down to the following is torn over the issue of mayor Moya. There are those who support her – as one of the party’s most prominently and loved national figures, and others who feel she is, to use the kindest term, fiscally irresponsible, and must not be allowed to stand for office again. The conventional wisdom is that the party leader is with the second group, which wants to see her gone, though he has never publicly taken sides.
But one man who has is his lifelong friend and political ally, Michael Finnegan who is leading the crusade to keep her. But it’s not just a differing of loyalties, it is a fundamental rift in the party and that’s what makes the stakes so impossibly high heading into Sunday. If Moya wins on Sunday, it will be truly against all odds and likely against the wishes and maneuverings of the party’s institutional base. If she loses, a wildly popular personality becomes a political free agent.
