The government believes that it is smart

Jan 20, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The government believes that it can run roughshod over elected bodies in this country and then expects them to dance to the government’s tune.

The government is facing a rude awakening, in this regard, from the PPPC-controlled Regional Democratic Councils who are refusing to participate in a farcical construction known as the Regional Development Consultative Committee.

The PPPC won the vast majority of the administrative regions in the 2015 elections. The government, seeking to undermine the PPPC’s domination of certain regions, set about the creation of new townships to help it gain a stronger foothold in certain regions. It created a town in Region 1, which the PPPC had traditionally dominated. It did the same in Region 9. It converted Bartica into a town in order to allow it to do well in the local government elections of 2015. This is what the ruling coalition is up to. Its latest creation is an attempt to try to weaken the support of PPPC-controlled regions. It is establishing these consultative committees which will allow it to be co-chaired by both the region and the municipalities. Why co-chair? This weakens the position of the Regional Chairman?

And why create a new body when these same forums can be organized within the ambit of powers granted to the regions. In other words, this whole idea of a regional consultative committee is suspicious and it is not surprising that the opposition would deem it sinister.

It is a farce whose purpose is to provide a veneer of credibility for the government, which will consult with these bodies and then claim that these are the representative bodies of local government in Guyana, and thus its consultation can be used to choose representatives for the Local Government Commission.

The opposition-controlled regions are perfectly in order to stay away from these types of bodies which serve only the government’s purposes. The government is not interested in democratic participation. The government is interested in control. It wants to control the regions using these bodies as a front, just as it is using the new towns to be able to control parts of those regions which it lost in the 2015 elections.

The government is behaving like Brer Anancy. It believes it can outfox anybody by drawing sympathy to itself. The President was crying about administrative sabotage, in relation to the absence of those regional chairmen who did not turn up at yesterday’s event. There was talk also about repercussions. How can a committee be consultative in nature but if you do not attend then you can be subject to repercussions?

The government needs to wake up. No one is afraid of it anymore. It believes it can do as it wants and get away with it. It believes it can run roughshod over elected bodies and get away with it.

The Guyanese people last year had to fight tooth and nail to force the coalition to backtrack on the deal for parking meters. Guess what? The APNU+AFC-controlled council is returning again with the same deal. It shows that it has no regard for the wishes of the people. And APNU knows that come this year’s local government elections, its supporters will vote back in those very persons who agreed to the parking meter deal.

The President likes to talk about ‘vulgarians.’ In 2016, a supporter of his party urinated on the PPPC’s flags. But that was not seen as vulgar.

Now the government is attempting to create its own means of controlling those regions which it did not win in the 2015 elections. And it wants the PPPC to play along?

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