Local democracy and local development

Mar 16, 2014 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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The People’s Progressive Party Civic administration has undermined local democracy for the past 20 years. This has led to the administrative paralysis of the entire local government system and the economic underdevelopment of many municipalities and neighbourhood communities.
The deterioration of physical infrastructure in many communities has been a visible indication of urban and rural economic stagnation. Progress has been impeded by the central government’s authoritarian attitude. It has been impeded by its inattentiveness to public needs and lack of major investment in physical infrastructure. It has been impeded most of all by the PPPC’s failure to conduct local government elections under reformed legislation.
The PPPC’s Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development – MLGRD – became infatuated with the old legislation. It seems, on the one hand, to be obsessed with the day-to-day, micro-management of local organs. It pays a lot of attention to picayune issues such as the selection, promotion and removal of personnel.  The Ministry, on the other hand, seems not to be able to see the bigger picture. It cannot comprehend the complexity of, or to discharge its long-term countrywide responsibility for, encouraging economic enterprise and development.
The MLGRD deliberately destroyed most neighbourhood democratic councils.  It can now, like a sort of colonial regional overlord, exercise suzerainty over the entire administrative apparatus. Wielding absolute power seems easy enough. Developing human communities and encouraging economic enterprise are much more difficult and require different skills.
The MLGRD’s major failure has been its inability to visualise a realistic transportation strategy. Guyana, after all, is bigger than England. Its population, apart from that of the coastland, is thinly distributed and its density is among the lowest in the hemisphere. Public administration cannot succeed without public transportation. Central government’s responsibility for transportation has been evident for over a century and a network of state-sponsored road, rail and river transport started to transform rural and hinterland life. The PPPC administration has not learnt the historic lesson of the importance of transportation and proceeds without a plan.
The PPPC seems to regard good roads as special favours granted to selected communities and withheld from others. Traversing some roads in out-of-favour regions, therefore, has become an agonising and costly experience. Residents of Bartica, Sophia, Ituni and East Bank Berbice have frequently had to publicly protest the poor condition of roads which have remained in a deplorable state for over a decade. Poor roads prevent ambulances and buses from accessing certain areas; they delay workers and schoolchildren on their everyday commuting; they starve businesses of customers and prevent farmers from taking their produce to markets. They suck the oxygen out of communities.
Many wooden bridges, which connect roadways, are unsafe. The collapse of the Moco-Moco Bridge temporarily stopped travel in the Rupununi. The Kumaka-San Jose Bridge became an expensive nightmare for Moruca residents. Safe, sturdy structures are necessary for present-day, heavy-duty, vehicular traffic.
Stellings are essential to the economies or riverain communities. Many of them, built of wood decades ago, have been damaged or are in a state of disrepair. The stellings at Bartica, New Amsterdam, Parika, Rosignol, Stabroek, Vreed-en-hoop and Wakenaam all need major rehabilitation. The Parika stelling, for example, has become one of the busiest and most important commercial hubs in the country but its infrastructure is inadequate for the increasing volume of daily traffic.
Isolated, but potentially productive, communities are heavily dependent on airstrips for services, supplies and the evacuation of medical cases. Several dozen frequently used airstrips in the hinterland receive only marginal maintenance and this has been a contributory factor to aviation accidents. The PPPC, despite all this, constructed an unwanted and still unused airstrip on Wakenaam Island.
The PPPC damaged local democratic organs over the past two decades and also damaged the prospects for economic development of urban and rural communities. It implanted an autocratic, bureaucratic, centralised, despotic, meddlesome Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development in place of vibrant, decentralized, democratic organs.
The MLGRD, despite its airs, is incapable of promoting the economic development of municipalities and neighbourhoods. It is clear that the holding of local government elections is essential to the restoration of local democracy and, consequently, to the re-energising of local economies.
The PPPC needs to create an economic environment that is inviting to investors and that encourages residents to remain in their communities and establish economic enterprises. The PPPC needs to radically change its approach to local government and regional development. It needs to introduce a new policy for the rehabilitation and construction of safe airstrips, bridges, canals, roads, stellings and other physical infrastructure.
The absence of a coherent infrastructure policy, the lack of a comprehensive plan and the failure to coordinate construction works have impaired economic development in local government areas where the majority of people live. Guyana’s abundant resources will remain underdeveloped and its transportation assets will continue to deteriorate without a public infrastructure plan.
Local government elections are essential to the re-emergence of real local democracy.  Local democratic organs are best placed to restart the reconstruction of local physical infrastructure. This, in turn, can make municipalities and neighbourhoods economically competitive and provide residents with the good life to which they are entitled.

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