Dear Editor,

Please permit me to respond to the letter captioned ‘The chairman and vice- chairman of a region are elected by members of the Regional Democratic Council,’ by Mr Archie W Cordis which was published in the Stabroek News of Janurary 21, and which conveys an incorrect impression of the election for the chairman and vice-chairman of a PPP/C-won region.

The party with the most seats is represented in the Regional Democratic Council (RDC), but as I understand it, the position taken by the councillors is not free and voluntary; they are given instructions by the PPP/C as to who they should nominate as the chairman and the vice-chairman at the first meeting of the RDC.

In my view, the RDC should not be a rubber stamp of anybody, and consequently the councillors, while firmly voting and presenting views, should be reasonable open-minded  and elect the best persons on past track records and on the basis of good standing. In this way we hope that the RDC which finally emerges will be acceptable to all the opposition parties, as it should be to the region at large. But since the outcome is known, all we can discuss at this stage is our input into the process in the hope that the party with the most RDC seats makes the right choice. Out of the spoils yielded by the system some benefit did indeed trickle down to those below. It is improbable, however, that this came about as the primary objective of the flawed system.

Many of the grosser defects of these arrangements can be corrected and have indeed been largely corrected in the welfare states of modern Western Europe. But there is perhaps a distinction between palliatives and a cure. The palliatives do not conceal the fact that the constitutions which emerged out of these older processes were primarily intended to consecrate favours by those who are loved by the party. The imbalances within the RDC system impose constraints, frictions and inhibitions which render it an unacceptable one for a developing nation like ours.

Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan