Old talk will not empower local governance

THE EDITOR: That the Manning Administration has deliberately starved, notably the rural-based, UNC-controlled Regional Corporations of the necessary financial resources to enable these entities to deliver on time and efficiently important services to their respective electoral districts, is a sordid, well-known secret. In fact except, for the THA that gets what it wants, this administration has and will do everything to weaken and marginalise local Government entities. How then, in the face of the above-mentioned scenario, can PM Manning repeat at the CPA Workshop on Government and Opposition (Newsday July 26, p 5) a proposal on empowering Local Govern-ment entities that he has been talking about without embarking on any enabling action whatsoever for at least three years?

According to PM Manning “active consideration” was being given to empower the Regional /Boroughs/City Councils to execute and implement policies (except for national security and foreign affairs), and I assume some selected programmes and national priorities that would be determined and established by Central Government. That would have impressed foreign CPA delegates. But hitherto the overt conduct and track record of the administration renders this oft-repeated Manning statement/proposal vacuous and diversionary-idle talk without walk. It would appear that contemporary politicians always want to appear to be politically correct even though what they say may seem increasingly meaningless to us the electorate or fly in the face of the prevailing empirical evidence.

CEPEP and the URP, whose annual budget exceeds $600 million are intended to circumvent the Regional Corporations. They serve as conduits for dispensing political patronage to provide infrastructure that is the natural responsibility of these Corporations. In these programmes accountability and transparency are non-existent and they fund and breed the criminal elements. The Constitutional Reform Forum (CRF) formulated an impressive and constructive position paper on empowering local governance ahead of the 2003 Local Government elections. This has been ignored by the Administration. The Rural Development Com-pany, the Sports Com-pany, The Housing Development Corpora-tion and the Infrastructure Deve-lopment Company are further duplicated institutional arrangements and strategies deliberately conceived to bypass and marginalise the Regional Corporations.

These companies will perform work that is or ought to be largely the preserve of Regional Corporations. I feel certain that Housing Minister Rowley will have discovered to his disappointment from his recent trip to England that public housing is the sole preserve of English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish Local Government boroughs and councils. Will Minister Rowley willingly surrender strategies being prosecuted in the marginals as well as his Housing Corporation to Local Government bodies operating outside of the East-West corridor and risk rural people (natural UNC constituencies) getting public housing? No way Jose!

STEPHEN KANGAL
Caroni