Which brings us to next year, when national elections are constitutionally due – by November, in fact. If the government is to meet the timetable for the general election, then it would hardly be practical to hold local government elections only months before. So exactly what are they planning? Are we going to have local government elections at the same time as national and regional elections? Or do they intend to postpone the whole issue of the local government poll until after the general election? As we reported recently, President Jagdeo certainly did not appear to rule out either of these possibilities; it was an issue, he said, which would have to be addressed during an engagement with all the opposition parties.
Dr Luncheon told the media in one of his post-Cabinet briefings that he thought it was still possible to hold local government polls this year. He was, of course, characteristically unforthcoming about how that might be achieved. The biggest obstacle is the local government legislation, three items of which sit mired in Select Committee in Parliament. The whole story of local government reform is so tortuous and tiresome that voters could be forgiven for switching off every time the subject is mentioned. However, if one were to sum up the story of the process since 2001, it would be that the PNCR – and since 2006 the AFC and GAP-ROAR as well – has favoured autonomy at the local government level with the kinds of mechanisms in place which would make that possible, and the PPP has been averse to releasing central government’s stranglehold on the local authorities.
The most recent phase of this serpentine story takes us to the National Assembly, where the President moved the discussions last year after he extinguished the Task Force on Local Government. The five bills relating to local government reform were sent to Select Committee, but it wasn’t long before the parliamentary opposition withdrew its participation because the government refused to make concessions aimed at reform. They were later to return on the understanding that the five bills would be treated with expedition, and that they would be presented to the National Assembly as a single package reflecting all the reforms which had been agreed.
The understanding about tabling notwithstanding, the government had other ideas, and just before the parliamentary recess in August last year it used its majority to get two of the bills passed in the House. The opposition was unhappy with both items of legislation, not merely because the government had reneged on the agreement about how they were to be tabled, but also because of their substantive provisions. The one dealing with the setting up of a local government commission gave the government by one route or another the power to appoint all its members – hardly much of an improvement on control of local authorities by the Minister of Local Government, which is what obtains at present. Where the second bill was concerned, it had been agreed that this one would reflect all the various amendments in the other laws, and so could not be dealt with until these had been completed. When the Select Committee met again after the recess, the government used its majority to set aside the agreed agenda for the bills, saying they should be dealt with in the order in which they had been brought to the National Assembly.
After these acts of bad faith, things ground to a halt, until the President met the Leader of the Opposition in March this year. Subsequently the head of state announced that a final effort would be made to complete local government legislation, and that the PPP had “reluctantly” agreed to this. Mr Corbin had been in the forefront of opposition demands for local government reform to be completed, while Mr Trotman of the AFC had indicated that his party would only be participating in the elections if it were.
The possibility that in the end the combined opposition might have withdrawn from the local government polls (although the PNCR never actually said it would) clearly made Freedom House nervous, and more than one of its senior members told this newspaper that the party really didn’t want any controversy surrounding these elections. Of course, its whole self definition is bound up with the matter of free and fair polls, and major controversy would not only damage its international reputation in that department, but damage its whole perception of itself.
At the same time, with the obstinacy of the truly blinkered, the PPP really doesn’t want autonomy for local government bodies and the kind of reforms recommended by the Task Force, which is why it is left with something of a conundrum. This may be why nothing happened after the President’s March announcement that a “last-ditch” effort would be made to push through the legislation, although on Friday Mr Corbin gave the media a different explanation. He said at a press conference that a second meeting was supposed to have been held to decide on the “modalities,” but that this meeting had been delayed because both he and the President had been out of the country for a time.
Exactly what “modalities” were required for the government to restart Select Committee deliberations was not clarified, but anyhow the Opposition Leader finally met the President again two months later on May 25.
Subsequently, the media were told from the government side that the Select Committee would resume its meetings, although we are now well into June and there is still no movement on that front. However, the Leader of the PNCR added his voice last week saying that the government would move to reconvene the Select Committee shortly.
Neither the President nor the Leader of the Opposition appears to be seized of the urgency of the situation, although as said above, the head of state, at least, does not appear to be refusing to contemplate the possibility there will be no local government polls before a general election. Furthermore, Mr Corbin had nothing to say about the report mentioned in the first paragraph above, namely, that the government had advised donors not to release funds for local government election programmes for the time being. He gave no hint that he thought the governing party might not be acting in good faith where resuscitating reform in the Select Committee was concerned.
As things stand the impression is being conveyed that everything is being allowed to slide, since even if the Select Committee does reconvene there will be little time to thrash out contentious issues, unless the PPP is behaving out of character and has decided that it will make concessions after all. With all these uncertainties it may still turn out to be the case that it will be too late to hold local government elections before the general election. In any event, the poor beleaguered public has no clue what is happening, and neither, it seems, do some segments of the opposition. AFC Select Committee Member David Patterson told this newspaper recently that his party had previously indicated its disappointment about what it called Mr Corbin’s “secret meetings” with Mr Jagdeo, and adverted to the fact that now yet another one had been held.
Will the Select Committee get down to work? Will it finish in time? Will there be enough of a window to hold the local polls? And will there be any more “secret” meetings or will there (God forbid) be any backroom ‘deals’? The electorate is tired of games and clandestine meetings, and it is about time it – not to mention the small oppositions parties – was given the genuine state of play. So President Jagdeo should do what he has said publicly he would, and meet all the parliamentary opposition parties and discuss the options and ‘what if’ scenarios.
Thereafter, the public should be told exactly what the situation is in a straightforward way; after all, voters have been waiting for local government elections for thirteen years.
