Have you ever tak­en spe­cial note of a promi­nent pot­hole in your dis­trict and checked on it every now and then to see how long it would take to be re­paired? There was one in north St Au­gus­tine that last­ed years. I called it names in tan­dem with a rapid­ly ro­tat­ing ros­ter of boast­ful works min­is­ters.

When rim comes in­to bru­tal con­tact with ragged as­phalt and soil, and the vi­o­lent rat­tle of weary en­gine mounts breaks the si­lence, there are words that form in your mouth and throat. You forcibly con­tem­plate the state of your spare tyre, and note that it’s pos­si­ble for mu­sic on a jump dri­ve to “skip” much like the old vinyl records.

Peo­ple I knew in the area said the pot­hole had been re­peat­ed­ly re­port­ed to all con­cerned – the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion, the MP, the works min­istry, priests, jour­nal­ists, and sundry cit­i­zens with “con­nec­tions.” Ac­cep­tance of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty re­mained elu­sive, and noth­ing changed.

That neigh­bour­hood learned the hard way that a se­ri­ous pot­hole can be one of the most po­lit­i­cal­ly unit­ing forces on the plan­et. Noth­ing like a twist­ed rim to ex­tract bi­par­ti­san con­dem­na­tion. That par­tic­u­lar St Au­gus­tine pot­hole spanned po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions at both lo­cal and cen­tral gov­ern­ment lev­els. When it was re­paired, I am sure some­body host­ed a par­ty in the area.

This came to mind re­cent­ly while fol­low­ing the bud­get de­bate in par­lia­ment. The chal­lenge of con­vert­ing plans and mon­ey in­to ac­tion came up again and again. How was it, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote asked, that na­tion­al bud­gets go to par­lia­ment, mon­ey is ap­proved, and for some rea­son al­lo­ca­tions do not reach their in­tend­ed agen­cies for im­ple­men­ta­tion? How come this seem­ing­ly in­vol­un­tary sta­sis?

Of course, the sen­a­tor was aware that some­times the rev­enue to meet in­tend­ed ex­pen­di­ture does not al­ways ma­te­ri­alise. In that case, some­thing, some­where will have to take a back seat. Sure. But what hap­pens when the mon­ey ap­pears to have al­ready been avail­able? Such as the sub­ven­tions the po­lice com­mis­sion­er griped open­ly and em­bar­rass­ing­ly about re­cent­ly (be­fore prompt­ly re­ceiv­ing the dough).

We hear the same from lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies, and no doubt, as we ap­proach De­cem­ber 2, we will have our ear­ful of it. But, why is this so?

Could it be that the no­tion of “re­form” whether at the con­sti­tu­tion­al lev­el, or as clear­ly re­quired un­der our sys­tem of lo­cal gov­ern­ment, needs to skip the elab­o­rate lan­guage and get more im­me­di­ate­ly to the task of how best to get sim­ple things done? I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pub­lic dis­cus­sions on lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form and thought that was pre­cise­ly what was be­ing pro­posed by lev­el-head­ed cit­i­zens who did not turn out to score par­ti­san points.

Al­so, any­body com­ing from the pri­vate sec­tor with an eye on prof­itabil­i­ty and the pro­tec­tion of in­vest­ments would un­der­stand­ably be ap­palled by this state of af­fairs – though huge in­ef­fi­cien­cies rid­dle that sec­tor as well. But im­pa­tience over these is­sues is more than im­pul­sive petu­lance. This is a per­fect­ly un­der­stand­able area of con­cern. It is a state­ment on our lev­el of so­cial and po­lit­i­cal un­der-de­vel­op­ment and points to an ab­sence of com­mu­ni­ty em­pow­er­ment - a state of civic im­po­tence even.

Re­cent­ly, the at­ten­tion of my neigh­bour­hood What­sApp group turned to this pre­cise is­sue on ac­count of what ought to be rou­tine com­pli­ance with ba­sic cit­i­zen ex­pec­ta­tions. “We,” one res­i­dent ex­claimed, “are at the stage of shock and sur­prise when some­one is ac­tu­al­ly do­ing his or her job and we aren’t in the least sur­prised by poor or non-ex­is­tent ser­vice.”

Even this per­son’s pro­fes­sion­al cre­den­tials in the be­hav­iour­al sci­ences could not fath­om the re­al­i­ty that, in this coun­try, a chron­ic in­ca­pac­i­ty to ex­e­cute ba­sic du­ties is in fact the norm. There has to be a patho­log­i­cal link some­where – some kind of mass dis­or­der ev­i­denced in mea­sures of civic dis­em­pow­er­ment.

At one time I thought it had ex­clu­sive­ly to do with ad­min­is­tra­tive pa­per-push­ers for whom process over­rides ob­jec­tive. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of that, and I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed will­ful ad­min­is­tra­tive ob­struc­tion­ism.

But, there has to be more to it. Why do we seem in­ca­pable of get­ting sim­ple things done? One res­i­dent reck­ons it has to do with “sys­tems”. Per­haps it tru­ly does. Per­haps it means turn­ing the pow­er dy­nam­ic on its head with de­ci­sion-mak­ing and ac­tion po­si­tioned at lo­cal lev­els - pow­er ef­fec­tive­ly in the hands of the peo­ple.

I have al­so fol­lowed the an­guish of a St Au­gus­tine cit­i­zen who over the space of months wit­nessed, brick by brick; felled tree by felled tree, the emer­gence of what is now a ful­ly-pop­u­lat­ed squat­ter com­mu­ni­ty – com­plete with an elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply yield­ing mu­sic loud enough to keep orig­i­nal res­i­dents awake all night.

Not min­is­ter. Not coun­cil­lor. Not priest. Not pun­dit. Not po­lice. No­body in­ter­vened. No­body was at fault, which ren­dered every­body guilty.

Could it just be that the “sys­tems” re­ferred to by my neigh­bour ought to de­rive their weight and ef­fec­tive­ness more di­rect­ly through the will of dis­crete com­mu­ni­ties? Could it be that true “lo­cal gov­ern­ment” holds the key to re­solv­ing the tragedy of our civic im­po­tence?