Federalism vs. decentralisation

Apr 17, 2011 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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There appears to be no disagreement among the political elite that governmental functions and powers are too centralised. Why does the status quo remain?
Following the Constitutional Reform process in 1999 the PPP and PNC instituted a Special Committee on Local Government Reform but its recommendations appear to have dropped into a black hole. While the village councils were reportedly supposed to be “strengthened” in a move to make governance more responsive to local needs, the reforms continued to envisage local Government only in terms of “decentralisation”. And this is the nub of the contradiction in the proposals of all those who claim that they desire “power to the people”: unless the “centre-periphery” links are given Constitutional protection to ensure that the periphery is consulted by the centre, real power will never be shared. This is essentially the difference between federalism and decentralisation.
Local Government background
The prolonged period of authoritarian government has unquestionably destroyed much of the initiative and competence of the local communities to manage their own affairs. After the abolition of slavery in 1834 the freed African slaves had established several villages on their own initiative. They created Village Councils to run the affairs of their communities and these Councils were the incubators of much of the leadership in the African community and formed their links to the county and national Governments. The Councils, through various committees such as drainage etc., were able to develop local expertise in managing organisations. But in the end they were undermined by the central government.
The introduction of the National Democratic Committees (NDC’s) that agglomerated several villages into one entity, while on paper may have appeared as a logical progression of the Village Council arrangement, ignored the historical and geographical realities of the village movement. Residents were still focused on problems in their particular village and this focus was reinforced by the geographical fact that the villages are strung linearly along the single main road and are each separated from their neighbours by canals.
The Indians by and large remained on the sugar plantations for another century after slavery and those who moved off mostly remained rural bound. The new and massive housing schemes created by the sugar companies from the early fifties, were all centred on the plantations and the affairs of these communities were run by a Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund (SILWF) that perpetuated the paternalistic rule of the “big manager” of the plantation.
The new Indian villages formed outside the ambit of the sugar plantations, on rented land, did no establish village councils and so to an extent far greater than the African community they are deficient in the mechanics of running and organising their local affairs.
The Indigenous Peoples were always the most excluded from the running of their own affairs. Their traditional village structures were undermined by the Catholic Church, which, in a de facto manner, assumed administration over them. Subsequent to the Regionalisation plan, both the PNC and PPP Governments have attempted to resuscitate the indigenous village governance structures. In the last decade there has been some progress in giving more autonomy to the Indigenous villages, but the overarching powers structures are still ultimately stifling.
Flawed Initiatives
Desmond Hoyte, architect of the Regional decentralisation initiative introduced in 1980, began to loosen up the state functions on his accession to the Presidency in 1985. But as did his successors, he rejected Federalism even though he complained about the failure of the regional arrangements.
For instance, the PNC, in its submission to the Constitution Reform Commission in May 1999 had proposed that:
“There can be no real democracy without a strong, vibrant local government system. This system would provide for the decentralization of power, the devolution of authority, and the participation of large numbers of people in the decision-making process in their communities…There should be a clear understanding and acceptance that the Regional Democratic Councils and the smaller Local Democratic Organs are part of the Local Government system and not agencies of the Central Government. To this end, therefore, the RDC’s should now be organized accordingly. They should exercise the power to raise revenues by taxation and otherwise and be responsible for a range of activities in their respective Regions as identified by law.”
The PNC was implicitly recommending that the powers and “legal framework” of the RDC’s should be constitutionally enshrined. If this were to be done then the only difference in their proposal and that of those who propose the federalist option on the question of allocation of competencies, would be to add the stricture that the central government cannot unilaterally alter the defined powers of the regions.
Passing further “lesser” laws will never keep the centre out of local affairs: historically these have always been subverted by the centre. Opponents to the Federalist option may have many reasons for rejecting federalism but amongst them cannot be the need to have a less centralised government. We hope this issue will be ventilated in the upcoming campaign.

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