An admixture of our unique political context and nearly two decades of autocratic PPP/C rule have given rise to notions of how we should conduct political discourse that appear to me neither practical nor complete. I was reminded of this last Saturday, when I read a letter from former Minister of Local Government Norman Whittaker in which he sought to enunciate how the regional system should be managed and chide the present government for failing to observe the established rules and procedures.
The former minister was more-or-less spot on with his explanation of how the regional democratic system should work and made some rather scathing comments in relation to the present regime. For example, ‘The hostile, arrogant attitude of some REOs who have undoubtedly been led to believe that they have a monopoly of knowledge and information which they must share with the ruling party only is, in my view, one of the major contributing factors to the poor performance of several regional administrations and the resultant return of hundreds of millions of dollars
