Empowering local authorities is an essential aspect of power sharing

Oct 26, 2008 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
Empowering local authorities to make decisions about developing people and production in their respective jurisdictions is, as the word “empowering” suggests, an important aspect of power sharing.

The central government in a multi-racial society must not only share power horizontally at the executive level to ensure multi-race rule. It must share power vertically to guarantee that multi-race rule is reflected at all levels of government.

Local government, seen in these terms, democratises governance by providing opportunities for people at the lower tiers to participate in the decisions that govern their lives.

That participation is at its fullest when there is iteration, that is a transparent process of going back and forth, between central and local government in respect of resource allocation, thus making it difficult to arrive at once-and-for-all objective criteria for fiscal transfers as considered desirable by Mr. Robert Corbin in his press statement of October 10th., 2008. Such criteria would perpetuate inequalities. This will be disadvantageous to the PNCR constituencies.

Fiscal transfers should aim to reduce inequities and should vary according to differences in the objective circumstances of the local communities. Wealth inequities are huge.

Arnold and Sobrina Boodram recently found bail money of US$10 million (about two billion Guyana dollars) for a New York court.

The Boodrams alone can buy out a whole African village on the Essequibo Coast and still have change left over. The narcotics trade has made the wealth inequality situation extremely complex, thereby making pre-conceived objective criteria for fiscal transfers practically useless.

Fiscal transfers require the iteration between the communities and the Central Government as envisaged above. Is this likely in the 2009 Budget?

The answer is, “No”. Guyanese political parties remain “terribly limited” (borrowing here from Chinweizu in his analysis of Nigerian independence). Despite the shouting of Marxism/Leninism, political parties are devoid of an analysis or a theory of our anti-colonial struggle.

The dilemma now being faced at Skeldon and the recent tortuous negotiations with the European Union for an Economic Partnership Agreement, bear witness to our emptiness in relation to the Chinweizu’s imperatives.

The Budget will remain stuck in a colonial top-down paradigm. Backwardness is the hall mark of our governance and our budgeting.

The wealth inequalities in the society will not be overcome in a short time. They will never be overcome, however, if races do not seek internal alliances within their own racial groups before seeking alliances across racial groups.

Middle class Africans and the leaders in the PNCR and the AFC do not understand that East Indian businesses, fishing co-operatives, and farming associations will not admit African businesses on the same terms of their existing net work relations. When the PNCR claims that it cannot strive for African people because they wish to avoid a racial label, the party is being extremely naïve.

The grass roots organisations, that is, the local authorities, provide the potential for racial uniting which will be lost in the present larger groupings where the more moneyed classes and better organised racial networks kill African collective self-determination efforts since it is not in their interest to support such African assertiveness. This is what has happened in the existing Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs).

When the demand for executive power sharing at the top is made without the demand for racial empowerment at the bottom, President Bharrat Jagdeo sees through the effort as elite power grabbing and calls it grabbing power by the back door.

It should more properly be called grabbing power for individual self-serving purposes since the sharing of power at the executive level will be empty if it is not consistent with self-determination and participation by Africans at all levels of the society.

Self serving is very obvious in the follow up to Vincent Alexander’s disclosure that the village councils will be restored with 50/50 representation between first past the post and proportional representation and that the same split will apply to Georgetown and the other towns.

The 50/50 representation split is dysfunctional anyhow. But even if it were not, there has been no effort in Georgetown to operationalise first past the post elections by defining ward boundaries.

Similarly, the restoration of village councils will necessitate redrawing East Indian community boundaries that are now part of the NDCs. The Task Force glosses over this problem by denying the restored village councils tax collecting authority.

With the 50/50 representation arrangements, the councilors selected directly by the villagers will be figureheads.

There is a lack of completeness in thinking through these recommendations that supports Chinweizu’s argument that we are held captive within the economic and cultural structures of the British Empire which the British politely and craftily renamed “The Commonwealth”.

The fact that we seem unable to think for ourselves is dangerous at this time that the world’s economic systems are facing collapse.

It is this inability to make consistent changes in our governance structures that hamstrings our development.

The AFC has intervened in the bulldozing of houses in Timehri and has launched a petition for the relief of the citizens whose houses have been destroyed by the Government.

When Mr. Francis Farrier approached Minister Robeson Benn on the wanton destruction at Timehri, the Minister indicated that the way was being made for a developer.

Timehri falls within Region Four. There is both a local authority and a Regional Authority that should have been apprised of this development. Apparently, the regional and local authorities have not been involved in the negotiation with the developer.

The AFC is struck by the inhumanity and the arbitrariness of the highhanded action of the Government.
But there is a bigger issue to be considered here that the AFC missed.

And that is the respective jurisdictions of the Government and the regional authority and the local authority. Power sharing is not only an executive level issue.

It is a matter of sharing power with local authorities. A national consensus among the races cannot be arrived at the top if it is not accompanied by arrangements that empower all races at the bottom to achieve racial parity in their communities.

It is the absence of a thorough grasp by the PNCR and by the AFC of what is required in local government reform that is most disappointing.
Clarence F. Ellis

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