Giving Power To the People

Dec 27, 2015 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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After almost two decades Guyanese will get an opportunity to elect new councillors to the six old municipalities, the four new ones; and sixty-five neighbourhood democratic councils.
These elections will be extremely important, for after all they are a democratic constitutional right. Most councils that were elected at the last local government elections in 1994 have been replaced by government–appointed members, and several are currently dysfunctional.
Local government is a vital level of public administration, because it deals with people’s daily lives, in their communities. Elections should be held every three years to allow people to democratically elect their representatives to govern their communities.
Unfortunately, for several local elections cycles, this vital cornerstone of our democracy has not been in place. Elections are essential because the entire local government system is rotten, and must be rehabilitated and made fully functional once again.
At the heart of the urban and rural development crisis is the question of who wields power in the municipal and neighbourhood councils.
There must be change at the local level if Guyana is to become a more equal and inclusive society and a less unbalanced and undemocratic state.
The Peoples Progressive Party Civic – PPPC – administration, for over two decades, demonstrated its reluctance to introduce the type of root–and–branch local government reforms that would have led to greater inclusionary democracy.
Six months after taking office, the Coalition A Partnership for National Unity and the Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) administration has announced a date for local government elections and embraced the reforming of the system.
Reforms are essential to give effect to the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana which states, at Article 12: “Local Government by freely elected representatives of the people is an integral part of the democratic organisation of the state.”
It states further, at Article 13, “The principal objective of the political system of the state is to establish an inclusionary democracy by providing increasing opportunities for the participation of citizens and their organisations in the management and decision-making that directly affect their well-being.”
While in power, the PPPC showed little interest in empowering the people to enable them to exercise greater control over their daily lives. The PPPC was more concerned with concentrating power in the hands of its appointed Ministers of Local Government and Regional Development. They purposely undermined democratically-elected local councils and underdeveloped communities by impeding the provision of public-services to residents. The neighbourhood and municipal councils, starved of funding, were unable to meet their statutory needs, thereby making them ineffectual. This led to the total breakdown of the system of local governance in Guyana.
A Partnership for National Unity’s struggles for local government reform while in opposition are well documented.
For many weeks, led by the then Leader of the Opposition Brigadier David Granger, APNU picketed the Office of the President, demanding a date for the holding of local government elections.
On several occasions, Granger wrote President Ramotar reminding him that local government elections, like general and regional elections, are a constitutional right and not favours to be bestowed by political parties whenever they choose. Ramotar was reminded that holding local elections was an obligation and not an option, anything else was acting counter to the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.
APNU believes in giving people the power to design the systems and determine the services that affect their everyday lives.
To achieve this, the relationship between the central and local government must be altered.
Our partnership has visited all of the local government areas and we have seen first-hand the problems at the community level.
Broken bridges, clogged canals, culverts, drains, gutters and trenches; flooding; overgrown cemeteries, playfields and parapets; potholed roads; stray dogs and roaming cattle; lack of adequate street lighting; lack of public space for entertainment, leisure, sport and recreation; lack of efficient solid waste disposal and lack of enforcement of building and zoning codes – all combine to make many neighbourhoods unsanitary, unpleasant and unsafe.
In his address to Parliament on June 10, 2015, His Excellency the President Granger proclaimed; “Your government will adhere to an empowerment policy that regularly renews local democracy by ensuring that local government elections are held – as is stipulated in our constitution.
We shall fortify grassroots democracy by ensuring that local residents are allowed to play a greater role in managing their own towns and villages.”
Local government elections will be held for the first time since 1994, on March 18, 2016.

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