I think that with the following statement by Mr. Ravi Dev, the discourse between us about the relevance of federalism to Guyana has come to an end. “Most recently, after Kenya experienced severe inter-ethnic violence following their 2007 elections, they instituted constitutional changes …. They divided the country into 47 `counties’ and constitutionally mandated at least 15 per cent of national revenue be sent directly to the counties, giving local leaders greater authority in managing resources. Each county will have a County Executive headed by a county governor elected directly by the people and a county assembly elected with representatives from wards within the county. …”
But before I proceed to explain why this is so, let me address some of Ravi’s interweaving concerns, all of which, for convenience, I have condensed in the following paragraph.
Mr. Dev finds my choice of the US as an example odd; he believes that I should have chosen an example of a federal state designed to deal with ethnic conflict. Further, he argues that I was wrong to claim that US federalism “was not conceived in
