SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Parts of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form leg­is­la­tion have been pro­claimed, ex­tend­ing the term of of­fice of coun­cil­lors and al­der­men by one year.

The an­nounce­ment was made on Thurs­day by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi in a vir­tu­al post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

He said Sec­tions 11 and 12 of the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act treats with the lifes­pan of coun­cil­lors and al­der­men elect­ed to lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies across the coun­try.

Un­der the pre­vi­ous leg­is­la­tion, both of­fice­hold­ers could on­ly serve for a three-year term be­fore hav­ing to face the polls again if they want­ed to re­main in of­fice.

But this par­tial procla­ma­tion means that is out the win­dow.

“To­day, I now give the in­for­ma­tion that we are pro­claim­ing the move of the life of coun­cils away from three years in­to four years,” Al-Rawi said.

He said it means this change now gives his min­istry the time to roll out sev­er­al oth­er mea­sures in­tro­duced in the leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing Prop­er­ty Tax and mak­ing the jobs of coun­cil­lors a full-time po­si­tion.

“Those in­clude tak­ing coun­cil­lors who are ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers, con­vert­ing them in­to what we call sec­re­taries, just like the THA has sec­re­taries in charge of var­i­ous di­vi­sions. Two, op­er­a­tional­is­ing 13 sep­a­rate di­vi­sions in­side of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment, the cor­po­ra­tions,” he said.

Al-Rawi said “hun­dreds of mil­lions” of dol­lars will flow in­to the cor­po­ra­tions from the col­lec­tion of Prop­er­ty Tax but he de­ferred ques­tions on when the Gov­ern­ment plans to start col­lect­ing the tax, say­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert would like­ly give a date dur­ing the sit­ting of Par­lia­ment to­day.

The Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted, though, that salary ne­go­ti­a­tions for these new full-time po­si­tions still have to be ne­go­ti­at­ed. But he said this need­ed to be done now, so po­ten­tial can­di­dates have a head’s up about the job now re­quir­ing them to work full-time.

“If we didn’t pro­claim the law this way and we turned on some of the oth­er sec­tions right now, we would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly dis­qual­i­fy al­most every serv­ing coun­cil­lor be­cause they have jobs else­where. Some may be doc­tors, some may be teach­ers, some may have busi­ness af­fairs else­where, so we have a phased turn on of the leg­is­la­tion,” he said.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia what pre­vent­ed him from pro­claim­ing these sec­tions of the leg­is­la­tion af­ter the next Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, which was pre­vi­ous­ly con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due be­fore March 2023, Al-Rawi said, “It’s true that you could look at it from both per­spec­tives. You could say that you could change the three-year term to a four-year term af­ter and you could do the oth­er steps that way, but what we are talk­ing about is the log­i­cal ap­proach be­ing that it is sim­ply im­por­tant to make sure that the new coun­cil that comes in­to the oc­cu­pa­tion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment have the ben­e­fit of the full pack­age of the law.”

As for the ques­tion of the new elec­tion date, Al-Rawi de­ferred to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, say­ing he has no con­trol over when an elec­tion is called.

“I am the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and will speak with­in my bat­ting crease, if you have ques­tions about elec­tion dates, there is a very ca­pa­ble and charm­ing gen­tle­man by the name of Dr Kei­th Christo­pher Row­ley who is the Prime Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic and you can ad­dress those con­cerns to him,” he said.

That was the last ques­tion he took from the me­dia, end­ing his vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence sev­er­al min­utes lat­er.

Fol­low­ing the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment that parts of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion have been pro­claimed, the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of run­ning from the elec­torate.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the PNM in­tends to “un­der­hand­ed­ly” shift the date for the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions.

“(Dr Kei­th) Row­ley’s move to par­tial­ly pro­claim cer­tain parts of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion to ex­tend the term of cur­rent elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives is in keep­ing with the dra­con­ian and un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic na­ture of this PNM regime,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in a re­lease.

She said it was part of the par­ty’s DNA, re­call­ing that for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning de­layed LGEs for al­most 10 years be­fore the UNC came in­to of­fice.

“It was on­ly un­der a UNC-led gov­ern­ment with Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, SC, MP as Prime Min­is­ter were Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions fi­nal­ly called.

“Row­ley, like Mr Man­ning, knows that the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go are ea­ger­ly await­ing the LGEs to show their dis­con­tent with this un­law­ful, cor­rupt and in­com­pe­tent PNM regime and to send a clear mes­sage that they want a re­turn to good gov­er­nance,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of de­stroy­ing the eco­nom­ic and so­cial fab­ric of the coun­try. She al­so said the Gov­ern­ment has col­lapsed in of­fice.

“The Op­po­si­tion calls on Kei­th Row­ley to call the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions and let the voice of the peo­ple be heard,” she said.