Local Government reform revisited

The general experience with regard to the functioning of councillors during their three-year term of office is that they may, according to their whims, preferences and prejudices, respond to residents’ grievances, complaints and representations but selectively especially to accommodate their relatives, friends and favoured supporters.

Councillors generally tend to ignore areas where they did not obtain votes or dismiss those who are not in their good books regardless of the pressing priority needs for which representation has been made.

At the moment, the councillors must approve every project, small or large, in his or her electoral district from the repair to every pot hole, clearing the grass on roadway verges and cleaning drains to road, footpath and bridge construction.

The electoral district is thus a little fiefdom over which the councillor presides.

Minister Franklin Khan wants to expand this fiefdom to empower the councillor to identify deserving pension applicants, the poor, child abusers and perpetrators of domestic violence.

He elaborates: “They will control their own piece of geography… who better knows the old lady who is in dire need of pension, not your councillor? Who knows the families that are at risk, with child abuse and domestic violence, and who suffer from extreme poverty, not your local councillor?” All this power is to be exercised without accountability.

To say that councillors will be held accountable and will have to answer to the residents in their electoral districts for their stewardship is to ignore the political reality that electors generally vote party regardless of the performance of the individual candidates.

All that is required for success in a safe or relatively safe seat is to manoeuvre in one way or another to be in the good graces of the party leader and hierarchy and secure the candidacy.

Thus this option of accountability is largely pre-empted by the current candidate selection process.

In order to address this problem of laissez-faire councillor accountability (and MPs as well) I had proposed in my column of 19/5/2013 that functioning community councils should be incorporated in the system of local government.

These councils would make provision for the representatives of the various communities within an electoral district as well as representatives of civil society organisations to sit on them. They will meet bi-monthly or quarterly, call the councillors to account and make suggestions and recommendations for new projects as well as more efficient delivery of existing services.

If greater powers, responsibilities and resources are to be devolved to local government bodies, then it is my view that a generally higher calibre of councillors is required to effectively embrace these larger functions.

This is not to deny electors their democratic choice of ordinary citizens who do not have much education or organizational experience.

However, to enable reforms to have a greater chance of success, candidates should inspire confidence through their possession of a higher level of education, qualifications, competence and commitment. A review of the occupations of candidates who have been nominated by the various political parties to contest the 2016 Local Government Elections is quite revealing.

In a speech at a consultation on Local Government Reform in April 2016 at the Diego Martin North Secondary School, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley acknowledged the magnitude of the problem. He is reported to have said (Newsday 1/5/16): “the biggest hurdle is getting competent people to serve, adding that people with management competence may say ‘not me and politics’.” He stressed they (the Government) did not want to put things in place under a ‘poor talent pool’…..

there needed to be a certain amount of discipline to make the s y s t e m work and, wi thou t that, the s e c o n d state will be worse than the first