The Guyanese people, after twenty years of disenfranchisement, are understandably fed-up with the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) regime’s excuses for not holding local government elections. To add to the injustice, the ruling regime persists in its quest to install Interim Management Committees (IMC) and hand-picked officers. Meanwhile, the regime continues to try to convince Guyanese that an IMC is actually superior to an elected council.
IMC mindset
Ganga Persaud, the former Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, is on record as praising IMCs and denouncing the performance of elected local government leaders. Norman Whittaker, the current Minister, has called for the installation of an IMC in Georgetown. The fact is that, apart from the anti-democratic nature of these activities, the PPP/C’s efforts to subsume local government, if successful, would defeat the purpose of local democracy.
Local government was not intended to be an extension of central government. Rather, it is the means by which citizens can exercise control, from the
