Christine Perriott asked to resign by Mayor Moya…

One day after the U.D.P. City Council kicked off its municipal elections campaign attempting to show some semblance of unity, Mayor Zenaida Moya finds herself once again at the epicenter of another controversy. This time there is plenty more drama and it surrounds the adversarial Human Resources Director, Christine Perriott who was asked by the mayor to resign. It is no secret that there has been bad blood between the two, and while Perriott says she won’t go her future at City Hall remains uncertain tonight. According to Perriott, the request was put to her on Friday and she was told that if she did not resign, the matter would be taken up in Cabinet. Perriott refused to step down and on Monday sent off a scathing letter to the Mayor accusing her of lying and alleging that Moya has been giving her a bad name and using her as a scapegoat for the mayor’s unpopular decisions. Today Perriott told us among other things that Moya is trying to fire her simply for doing her job.

Christine Perriott, Asked to Resign
“She even further said if I don’t resign, they are going to do a poll with the staff. And I said well, that’s okay, let them go ahead and do it. I would welcome such a petition because then for me it would be telling me how I am performing, what needs to be done with what I am doing. My response is that I would not resign based on the principles she is asking me. Those are not my principles, those are not—I felt that she is not being honest with me, she is being dishonest with other people about me. She tells me one thing and she tells someone else a next thing then she tells another person something else and she tells me another thing. I have seen this many times before and so I felt if I resigned on her request, the reasons she is giving me would just confirm with what she is saying. She is also saying all the staff and managers are not happy with me being there and that there is too many terminations. I need to state for the record that every termination, every suspension, every action that was taken by me the mayor knew. She gave her approval. You think that as a director I can go and unilaterally can act on my own? Ha! Gone long time.”

Kendra Griffith
“You’ve been in this job nine months and in that nine months this is the third time your name is coming up in the media. People would say that they think that you are a sort of controversial figure. You had the whole thing about the staff being disgruntled about the way that you were doing your job, you have the fuel vouchers thing and now this issue.”

Christine Perriott
“It can come across as that if you just look at it on the front value of it, but you never judge on one side of a story. You always have to hear both sides of a story and then you have to siphon out the truth. Anywhere you go that is—for lack of a better word—out of order and you go there and try to implement measures, you will be classed as a bad person. That is why it was her responsibility to make sure that the staff understood, which she never did, because it is known that City Council had a lot of lazy people, it is known that they have a lot of people that are not performing; come dah work when dehn want, absent when dehn want, walk out when dehn want, heng out when dehn want. And you also have a lot of good staff and the good staff are the ones that are suffering and it doesn’t matter whether they were politically appointed or not. The point it that we have a job to do and City Council serves the public. So I came in with that in mind. I didn’t expect to be the most liked person, but I did expect the see changes and I have seen the changes and nobody can’t attest otherwise.”