Our local government system has its roots in the immediate post-emancipation period when the new freedmen sought social and economic liberation from the plantocracy by purchasing plantations and forming independent villages. A report in the London Times of 19th August, 1845 referred to these villages as little bands of socialists, and they were run by democratically elected management committees in which women had equal rights, which they later lost by way of the Franchise Act of 1849 and did not regain again until 1928, when the British government reformed the Guyana constitution by Order-in-Council.
Today, local democracy is considered necessary not only because of the longstanding notion that emphasises its capacity to deliver more efficient and effective services but because with increased communication, knowledge and education people require greater and greater
