Shawqi Mustafa
An often combative Hanover Park Park District commissioner was removed from the board after being disruptive and ejected from last Monday’s meeting.
Fellow commissioners created a vacancy through their formal acceptance of Shawqi Mustafa’s resignation letter he signed last fall while recovering from injuries in a vehicle collision.
Mustafa said Friday he’s not planning to run again next April, but plans to contact the Illinois attorney general’s office next week to try to be reinstated and complete his original term.
The park board, meanwhile, is making its own plans to fill the vacancy by interviewing candidates and appointing one of them by the end of the month.
The resignation letter the board accepted has an unusual history.
Mustafa was injured in a crash last October and spent a few weeks in intensive care. During his hospitalization, his wife Belinda — who chairs the financially supportive Hanover Park Park Foundation — told the board it was probably best for her husband to resign.
They told her such action could only be made by Shawqi Mustafa himself, but the district could draft a written document for him to sign.
But when her husband was ultimately released from the hospital, Belinda Mustafa said she didn’t feel comfortable presenting the document to him herself. She instead asked former commissioner Laura Reilly to have him sign the letter.
“At the time, he wasn’t himself,” Belinda Mustafa said. “He seemed very aggressive. I had Laura invite him over to sign it. He trusted her. He didn’t know what it was. She took it and turned it in. As he became more focused, it was clear he didn’t want to resign.”
The typewritten letter, signed and dated Nov. 27, 2023, reads simply, “I, Shawqi Mustafa, do hereby resign, unconditionally, from my elected office of Park Commissioner of the Hanover Park Park District, effective immediately.”
“They fooled me with it,” Shawqi Mustafa said Friday. “I wasn’t fully aware. In court, I could swear I signed that letter in the dark.”
A park district investigation led the board to table the letter rather than accept it. But its validity was only ever verbally challenged by Shawqi Mustafa, he never submitted a written challenge, officials said.
Board President Mark Elkins said it was in the best interest of the district to ultimately accept the resignation letter.
“Monday he was clearly set out to sabotage the meeting from the outset,” Elkins said. “Nobody wanted to do that, but I realized it wasn’t going to get any better. It’s been like this for three-plus years.”
Mark Elkins
Chaos erupted during Monday’s meeting when Shawqi Mustafa complained about board procedures and then things escalated when Belinda Mustafa couldn’t give her report via Zoom. Her husband accused district staff of intentionally preventing her from speaking.
Shawqi Mustafa was escorted out of the meeting room by park district staff to “cool down.” Elkins had Belinda Mustafa call into the meeting on his mobile phone to give her report. But Shawqi Mustafa, who would later start making phone calls from the audience area of the room, was ultimately ejected from the building by police later in the evening and told not to return.
Shawqi Mustafa’s behavior toward both fellow commissioners and staff have been an issue for years, Elkins said.
“Commissioner Mustafa has had a difficult time adapting to the needs of the district,” Elkins said. “In part, he seems to operate on low information. It’s incumbent on every officer to understand the language and the nuances that apply to the office that they hold. He’s had a very difficult relationship with staff because he doesn’t understand that his role is not to manage but to govern.”
Nevertheless, Elkins added he believes Shawqi Mustafa sought the post with the best of intentions.
“Shawqi Mustafa is a caring, loving person who desires only to serve the residents of the district,” he said. “But he is not capable of doing it because he cannot stay in a productive mode long enough to do anything.”