So finally the President has shown the ruling party’s hand. The citizens of Georgetown have to endure the piles of refuse and the serious health hazard that these represent, because the denizens of Freedom House or the Office of the President or both want an excuse to impose an Interim Management Committee on the capital. The theory is that by demonstrating that the Mayor and City Council can’t manage the city, we would all be amenable to an IMC, which would then proceed to clean up GT – backed by ample resources from the central government, of course. After that out of gratitude, we would all traipse cheerfully to the local government polls and vote for a PPP council.
On Friday the President called a sudden press conference in which he said that if PNCR Leader Robert Corbin agreed, an IMC could be in place “tomorrow.” Technically, he doesn’t need the PNCR’s agreement; it’s just that Georgetown has not traditionally been a PPP preserve, and the party does not want to be accused of acting in authoritarian mode. Perhaps they feel that Mr Corbin may be ready to co-operate with them at this point, as he did in the case of Linden, where he acceded to the removal of the town council and the installation of an IMC. The fly in this particular ointment, of course, is that Mayor Hamilton Green now sits as a member of the central executive of the PNCR, so it is difficult to see Mr Corbin abandoning his senior party colleague for Mr Jagdeo.
It is true that Georgetown had an IMC once before, but that was prior to the 1994 elections. It must be noted too that despite the fact that this PPP/C committee cleaned up the city with some vigour, courtesy of funds from the central administration, it did not have much of an impact on the voting habits of the residents.
Two things about the current situation bear repeating: the first is that the M&CC has very little power under the law, and the second is that the city’s revenue base is too slender to allow the municipal authorities to discharge their functions adequately. While the government has spent the last fifteen years blaming the council for the capital’s shortcomings, as was said last week the person with the most power in relation to the municipality is not the Mayor, but the Minister of Local Government.
This has even been acknowledged by government spokesmen, although not directly in relation to Georgetown. In a letter in our newspaper published on August 22 this year from Mr Clinton Collymore, it was stated: “Minister Lall in his capacity of Local Government Minister is by the very nature of his office, already in full control of every single NDC in Guyana… This total control is by virtue of laws passed by the dictatorial PNC regime in the 1969-73 period, when Burnham ruled.” While he is talking of Neighbourhood Democratic Councils here, with some qualifications it applies to municipal authorities as well.
While the council prepares the budget, and has oversight committees, it does not actually handle the money or have any direct control over the municipality’s senior officers. Power in relation to the latter lies with the Minister of Local Government, who is the only one who can suspend or fire the top officials if they are not performing or if they are corrupt. The Mayor has no authority to discipline the senior staff. This has enabled the President in the past to bypass the Mayor et al, and just deal with the Town Clerk and senior officials directly when he has wanted some project carried out. And for all the government’s complaints about inefficiency and corruption at City Hall, it took years before it exercised its considerable powers and moved to do anything about it.
This is not to suggest that the M&CC is blameless, or that given more authority it would discharge its duties more competently; it would not. It is simply to recognize that its ability to act is severely circumscribed, and that in critical areas Minister Lall has more leverage in city affairs than does the Mayor.
We will repeat too what we said last week about financial resources; the M&CC does not have sufficient revenue to carry out its functions. In a sense that was by implication conceded by the President on Friday when he listed all the things the government had paid for in the past. Even if the council was the most efficient body in the hemisphere, it still would not have enough funds to run the city. (The rates are too low, and as elaborated on last week, there is no effective sanction now against defaulting ratepayers.) Mr Jagdeo’s present grouse (excuse?) seems to be that the council has been given money by central government to cut the grass and it cannot even do that properly. But that is irrelevant to the present crisis, which, as everyone knows, has come about because the M&CC cannot pay its contractors to remove the garbage.
So we have a situation where central government habitually allows crises to develop (it likes the garbage ones best, for obvious reasons), then complains about corruption or incompetence or inefficiency at City Hall, before stepping in eventually to ‘save’ the citizenry. However, to put the health of residents at risk for as long as two weeks for the sake of a political advantage appears extraordinarily cynical.
Since the aim of the latest drama is to install an IMC, one can reasonably conclude that the ruling party would want it in place for long enough to demonstrate the wonder of its works. As such, therefore, it is also reasonable to conclude that contrary to all its protestations that it wants local government elections held soon, it may not at all be averse to a delay. The government holds the election purse strings, for example, and it has not yet explained why De la Rue, which had been contracted to produce the ID cards was not paid until June 11 (it needed 90% up front), when it was known that the period of production was four months. There were other delays too, which could not all be placed at the door of Gecom.
Could it be that what it really wants is for local government elections to take place at the same time as national elections? If so, it should come out in the open and say so, and let the matter be debated publicly in a rational way.
At the time of writing it was not known what the President offered in his meeting with Deputy Mayor Robert Williams and city officials yesterday. One can only hope that he will indeed spare a thought for the health of those who have to live in the capital and come to some arrangement to solve the immediate crisis. As for the longer term, something else needs to be in place, and that something is not an IMC. Hopefully, Mr Corbin will see the current ruling party manoeuvres to get a management committee installed for what they are – a form of blackmail.
Finally, the President’s refusal to include the Mayor in his meeting with the city officials does him no credit. It doesn’t matter what he thinks of Mr Green the man, as head of state he is required to show the office of Mayor public respect.
