Local government democracy did not come in 2016

Feb 19, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Democracy in the West came under severe criticism from communist thinkers from the 19th century onwards. It was the Russian Revolution in 1917 that consolidated previous left wing theory of democratic farce in western countries.
From thereon, western society was seen by communist scholarship as really bourgeois dominated society in general. Philosophers like the Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci, argued that western democracy is in fact cultural domination by the ruling classes.
After the Second World War, there was a proliferation of leftwing/ socialist/communist thinkers who argued that the West was more capitalist in nature than democratic in essence. The Frankfurt School in Germany, the French intellectual scene, the radicals in the British Labour Party, Third World scholars such as Franz Fanon, Walter Rodney, CLR James and thinkers like Noam Chomsky in the US popularized the concept that capitalism and democracy are not soul mates.
One recurring theme in those intellectual outputs was that the West had its own definition of democracy which conflicted with the philosophical meaning of the process.
Guyanese were introduced to this critique of convenient democracy in the West by first, the united PPP of Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham, then the communist oriented PPP of Cheddi and Janet Jagan. Jagan’s autobiography, “The West on Trial,” was very influential among the Left in Guyana, including students, scholars and trade unions.
Jagan in his memoirs did a demolition job on the West exposing its convenient approach to democracy. The Cold War was perhaps the most powerful force that acted against the West’s efforts to teach the world about democracy. You couldn’t believe in democracy and supported the brutal suppression of twenty million Blacks by two million Whites in South Africa.
This has been a long digression into the West’s current attitude to local democracy in Guyana. From the time, the clamour for local elections began in the late nineties, the ABC countries have been supportive of efforts to have such polls around Guyana. ABC countries were particularly annoyed by the frustrating attitudes of the Jagdeo regime.
At one time, the PPP Government cited lack of funds as the main reason. One of the ABC countries offered to finance the entire project. Then came the decision to reform the system before elections were held, thus was born the Local Government Reform Commission. The ABC countries spared no effort to have these elections. We had them in 2016 and the performance so far is anything but democratic.
One of the rotten flaws in the local government structure is the office of the REO. It is antithetical to democracy. It was a clever device by President Burnham to centralize control over the ten RDCs. We have retained that mechanism which needs to be dissolved. This is how it works.
At general elections we vote for a local parliament in the ten Regions. The elected head of each Region is the Chairman of the RDC. But central government sends out ten executive officers whose authority supersedes the elected chairman.
At the moment there is a stand-off in Region Two which there is pure comedy or depending how you look at it, pure tragedy. The REO sent workers to remove the building structure of a family on the explanation that the family will be squatting on reserve land.
The government for Region Two which is the RDC with its elected chairman objected saying the family should not be treated this way. But the RDC cannot reverse the REO’s decision. If that is local government democracy then Hitler was saviour to the world.
Nowhere is this caricature more vividly displayed than in the Georgetown City Council. Few months back I interviewed the Deputy Mayor, Lionel Jaikarran, on a particular issue. He didn’t know about the Town Clerk’s decision to raise market rent even though he is the head of the Market Committee of the Council. I interviewed the Deputy Town Clerk and she said it was in the pipeline but she didn’t know the decision was implemented.
There have been repeated statements by the Minister of Communities, the Deputy Mayor and individual councilors that the Town Clerk makes decision that should have been first discussed and given approval by the government that administers the capital city.
One such instance is the playfield affair. One is Subryanville where part of it was offered to a business woman, the other in Bel Air Park where a building was to be constructed on the field. The Council did not know of and did not make those decisions.
If that is local government democracy then, Stalin was an angel. The ABC countries are yet to comment on the failure of local government democracy.

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