The failure to run off local government elections during the current parliament is unfortunate, according to United States Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Bryan Hunt.
“It’s very unfortunate that we did not see local government elections during the life of the current parliament,” Hunt said in an interview with Stabroek News on Thursday, while adding that it would have been a wonderful opportunity for the Guyanese people to have a direct say in how their localities are run. He said after national elections, he hopes and a lot of the international community hope Guyana will be moving towards local government elections.
Local government elections have not been held since 1994 and despite many local and international calls, the Donald Ramotar administration has not moved to hold the polls.
The US-funded Leader-ship and Democracy (LEAD) project, among other things, was aimed at boosting citizens’ engagement with local parliamentarians and improving overall governance.
Hunt said a lot has been learnt during the implementation of the project and the US would like to see more stakeholders involved.
“If we decide to embark on another series of local government election training programmes… we would want to ensure that there are more stakeholders involved in the organisation of those town hall meetings, more civil society involvement, in doing that,” he explained.
Asked about the low turnouts at some of the meetings, Hunt said some had “very reasonable” turnouts in the areas where they were held while at others the turnout was lower than what they would have liked. However, he said this is a situation that occurs anywhere where such a public forum is being run. “Certainly we’ve learned certain things,” he said.
Hunt said it was the first time they had ever tried organising such a project around local government elections and they learnt a great number of things and gained a great deal of information. His expectation is once the local government elections cycle begins, they would be prepared to work again with the Guyana Elections Commission and the government of the day as well as other stakeholders to organise additional town hall meetings to ensure that the broadest possible swathe of the Guyanese electorate is able to have a good understanding of how local government works and what the responsibilities of the local government are, he said.
At the moment, Hunt said the project is focused principally on the training of the parliamentary staff. One of the components is working with the staff of the National Assembly to provide a series of training courses that were identified as critical to improve their support to the parliamentarians and the committees.
It is also working closely with the Women and Gender Equality Commis-sion to identify additional training workshops that can be held on political participation by women in Guyana and discussions are ongoing with the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport on various training programmes that can be provided to youth organisations to assist them in improving their abilities to function around the country, Hunt said. Those are the ones anticipated for the time that remains in the LEAD project, he added.
Meanwhile, Hunt also said that over the course of last year the trajectory at the bilateral cooperation level between Guyana and the United States has been reasonably good and there were a number of successes.
He pointed out that the Skills and Knowledge for Youth Empowerment programme continues to assist large numbers of at-risk youth, while there were accomplishments in the PEPFAR programme which seeks to combat HIV/AIDS and there were important transitions to increase the sustainability of the programme over the long term within the Ministry of Health.
There was tremendous progress in working with young people on the Guyana Shines initiative and moving forward with environmental awareness in Georgetown and beyond, Hunt said. He asserted that these initiatives all speak towards a fairly broad and robust base of cooperation between the United Stated and Guyana. He also mentioned the international visitors’ programme, student exchanges and the large number of tourist visas granted as well as the business interests that continue to grow here from the US. In this regard, he highlighted the investment by oil giant Exxon Mobil which is hoping to find oil here.
Challenges also remain, Hunt said. “We had been at the forefront of highlighting the issue of trafficking in persons. I think that’s one where work still remains to be done. I think there is still tremendous work to be done on the scourge of gender-based violence that exists. I think there is still tremendous work that remains to be done in terms of cooperation within the political sphere, within Guyana itself,” he added.
