Jyoti Gondek Is Unfit To Be Mayor
She is unable to transcend her feelings
Thursday night, I attended my first Menorah Lighting ever. Had Jyoti Gondek, the Mayor of Calgary, not announced her boycott of the event, I would have not taken the time to go. But I am glad I did. Thank you, mayor. It was a great celebration, a reminder that light always prevails over darkness, and the only political undertones in the evening were those made about the mayor's unfortunate and ill-timed boycott of the event.
On the eve of the event, the mayor claimed the tricky Jewish leadership deceived her. They allegedly planned to turn the ceremony into a pro-Israel rally or as CTV’s Omar Sachedina said of the pro-Israel rally on Parliament Hill a few days earlier, "in support of the war." Gondek jumped right away to a pro-war rally. In her mind, "political intentions" are strangely incompatible with "diversity and inclusion. [You can see the CTV clip in an X post here].
But as Rahim Mohammed pointed out, the mayor's stance shows a profound ignorance of Jewish history. The Hannukah celebration is a commemoration of a battle against oppression. In the context of Israel today, as it was with the Maccabees, it is the home of Jewish people and it is inconceivable that the community would not support Israel.
Leaving the mayor's need to learn some Jewish history aside, her boycott once again reveals two central things. She is not very clear that as the mayor of Calgary Her Worship represents the whole community, and she is not professional enough to put her personal feelings aside.
She made her feelings known in her long statement posted to X, which several thousands of Calgarians, including yours truly, cannot access. The mayor is known to hit the block button on the app in supersonic reflex at the first hint of disagreement or disapproval with anything she says or does. My particular sin? I wrote a commentary on her doomsday "climate emergency" declaration after she took the oath of office.
And so she put her feelings right at the forefront. The conniving Jewish leadership, she said, "left me feeling let down." The rest of the release is a justification for the protection of her feelings, including the audacious claim of concern for the poor dupes who might attend only to find "their good intentions compromised." I went to support the Jewish community that she abandoned. My intentions were good, and at no point did I feel in any way compromised.
Gondek has been overstepping from day one. Consider the Sean Chu issue. A freshly sworn-in Mayor Gondek refused to give Chu the oath of office (although she campaigned on the dubious promise to unify City Council). On a whim, based on her personal feelings about Chu. This is not a defence of Chu as a person. I merely wish to point out how from the start Gondek showed an inclination to drop her duties, the duties of the office, as fast as she could as soon as they ran against her opinion of something or someone.
On November 2, 2021, one of my readers sent the mayor a note regarding Chu being whimsically sidelined from committee work. The citizen lived in Chu's riding but had not voted for him. Ideologically, the citizen writing to Gondek (see below) was closer to Gondek than she is to Chu, so this is not an issue of Right or Left. The point here is that Gondek was overriding the representation of the voters in Ward 4 to indulge her feelings against Chu.
I read with dismay in the news this morning that your council has decided to sideline a duly elected councillor from assignment to committee work. As a resident of Ward 4, regardless of whether I voted for the person who won the election, I am very concerned that my representative now has no official assignment to city committee work. This is a gross overstep and demonstrates a blatant disregard for due process, which is essential to effective governance.
Mayor Gondek, you spoke about ensuring that everyone's voice is heard in the new city council. I applaud this sentiment but have little faith in your sincerity when shortly after saying this, you support this kind of action. Ensuring that my elected representative has a place at the table would mean that you are hearing the concerns of all the citizens of the city, not just those who happened to have elected your favourite candidates.
There is no place for this kind of action in responsible government. I urge you to reconsider your position on this issue, and issue an apology to the residents of Ward 4 for sidelining us in what is little more than a popularity contest.
My friend got a vacuous form letter in reply, but neither Gondek nor anyone in the Mayor's Office ever bothered to respond to the core issue of robbing her of representation.
As Jen Gerson points out in her call to Mayor Gondek to "do your fucking job," ..." a mayor is required to show up for people she does not agree with."
But Jyoti is immaturely thin-skinned and unable to transcend her personal feelings. She seems unwilling to adopt a professional conduct and abstract herself from her feelings to accomplish her duties. She chooses to forget that she represents all Calgarians, many of whom have different views from hers on many things.
Somehow, Jyoti Gondek has managed to read into the job description for Mayor of Calgary that her duties are some kind of a menu from which she can pick and choose what she likes and agrees with. Whatever she does not, she'll ignore or resist. In her mind, the job is about what Jyoti wants, or can tolerate. She has repeatedly placed herself first and at the centre, pushing duty and constituents to the background.
In a piece I was asked to write in April of 2023 about the mayor's unpopularity, I outlined what I see as part of the problem still today: “Leading in a liberal democracy is not about having your way on everything. Proper leadership in a liberal democracy is acting in the service of others. It requires careful consideration of the needs of others. It requires the prudence to put oneself and one’s feelings aside.” Again, Gondek does not possess the emotional maturity, a crucial asset in a job in which one deals with lots of different people, to get her job done.
In this light, Jen Gerson is correct in demanding that Gondek do her job, and Braid is correct in saying that Jyoti Gondek is not fit to be Mayor. Peter Menzies is correct in inviting her to take a long walk in the fresh snow Calgary just received. Calgary deserves to have someone in the mayor's office to serve them with the maturity and judgment to put herself aside.