DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

The Peo­ple Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment has lost a tremen­dous de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty for a pure­ly short term po­lit­i­cal gain, by call­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions too ear­ly. This was the view of Lennox Sankers­ingh, a mem­ber of the Con­gress Of the Peo­ple (COP) Strat­e­gy Com­mit­tee. in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sankers­ingh said, "By call­ing lo­cal elec­tions im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tions, the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made a po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion rather than the op­por­tu­ni­ty for de­vel­op­ment."

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to call lo­cal elec­tions was to try and take ad­van­tage of the po­lit­i­cal mo­men­tum,...to take ad­van­tage of the ap­par­ent­ly dis­or­gan­ised Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). Sankers­ingh, al­so a for­mer Shad­ow Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter in the COP, not­ed that re­al val­ue would have been de­rived if the Prime Min­is­ter had en­gaged the pub­lic in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions. He said be­cause lo­cal gov­ern­ment had been a hot top­ic on the is­sue of a pro­posed re­form by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, it would have been use­ful for this present Gov­ern­ment to place it on the na­tion­al agen­da for mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion. "Many peo­ple have spo­ken about the ab­solute de­cay of lo­cal gov­ern­ment where it on­ly ex­ists in form and struc­ture. But the spir­it and essence are to­tal­ly ab­sent," Sankers­ingh said.

"It was for this rea­son as well that the Gov­ern­ment should have tak­en about a month to state what lo­cal gov­ern­ment is all about and the way for­ward," he added. He said, "Present­ly, lo­cal gov­ern­ment is far re­moved from the peo­ple and it would not be a sur­prise they do not know who the chair-per­sons rep­re­sent­ing their com­mu­ni­ties are." "But be­cause the lo­cal gov­ern­ment is in this kind of deca­dence, it would have been wise to iden­ti­fy key is­sues, es­tab­lish a pro­pos­al as the way for­ward based on mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion with re­spect to the needs of the peo­ple," he said. "As a con­se­quence they have lost a tremen­dous de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty for pure­ly short term po­lit­i­cal gain," Sankers­ingh added. He said the peo­ple can ben­e­fit by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process on a num­ber of is­sues in­clud­ing what lev­el of de­vel­op­ment would take place in their com­mu­ni­ty, what is deemed pri­or­i­ty, how can the com­mu­ni­ty be mo­bilised and what can be done to in­hib­it crime in their area. But peo­ple have noth­ing to re­spond to be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has not stat­ed where it wish­es to take lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, he added.