Say what you want about the prime min­is­ter and her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, the PNM should be thank­ful to her for hav­ing the guts and the sense of do­ing the right thing to call the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions (LGE) when it was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due.Com­pare this with the PNM which failed to call the LGE in 2006 and, like un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic cow­ards, post­poned the elec­tions for four years un­der one pre­tence or an­oth­er, the main one be­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form.

If the PNM had not lost the gen­er­al elec­tions in 2010, God alone knows we may still not have had a LGE.For ten years and more, the PNM talked about lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form and im­ple­ment­ed noth­ing. In three years, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­tro­duced and im­ple­ment­ed a most sig­nif­i­cant re­form–the se­lec­tion of Al­der­men based on pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

So be­fore he opens his mouth and talks about the PP be­ing un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, Dr Kei­th Row­ley should do well to re­mem­ber that the PNM's track record shows oth­er­wise.Oh, and by the way, Kei­th, you re­al­ly did not win any­thing sig­nif­i­cant and the "pop­u­la­tion" did not vote "for" you.Ac­cord­ing to news­pa­per fig­ures, more peo­ple vot­ed against you (150,000) than for you (116,000).Do you re­al­ly think that ten per cent of the elec­torate vot­ing for you is a ring­ing en­dorse­ment?

A Charles

Mount Hope