Sankersingh hits council Bill

Parliament recently passed the Municipal Corporations (Amend-ment) Act 2006 to boost sitting councillors, but not to extend the lives of council appointees such as Mayor and Aldermen.

Noting the Bill extends tenure “as though each councillor had been elected for an additional period of one year”, he complained that the Bill pretends an election has taken place for councillors for a term of one year.

“The election process is the bedrock on which our democracy is built and to inform the Nation that councillors are being placed back at the councils for one year ‘as though an election had taken place’ is wrong and totally unacceptable and would be a total violation of democratic principles”.

Sankersingh said the Bill amounted to the Government legislating an election. “This is probably the first time in the history of the democratic world that an election is being legislated and is certainly unprecedented in the history of democratic institutions”.

The issue, he said, raised the case of the protection of representative institutions in our National Constitution. “Local Government is not protected in our Constitu-tion and consequently we see how easily the process can be manipulated.” The Bill, he charged, was an abuse of the process of Parlia-ment, by the majority legislating as though an election had taken place.

He told Newsday: “The legal validity of this measure is questionable.”