Administration has no reason not to hold Local Govt. Elections
- Ramkarran
There is no reason why the Government cannot now proceed to hold Local Government Elections, since a decision on whether to hold General Elections is not likely to be taken until next year. This is the view held by former Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) stalwart, Ralph Ramkarran who opined too that Local Government Elections can be held in the second half of the year. According to Ramkarran, the holding of Local Government Elections would be a wise option since it would divert attention from some unwelcome issues.
Ralph Ramkarran
“It will also occupy the energies and resources of everyone until the end of the year…This is the sensible thing to do and it will relieve the Government of a lot of pressure from the Opposition, civil society and the diplomatic community.” Ramkarran made his views known in his latest piece posted on his conversationtree.org media outlet over the weekend. He said that the Opposition’s agenda in the meantime, if it was ever a coherent one in the first place, has fizzled out. Ramkarran pointed to the fact that the Opposition has rejected major infrastructural work such as the Amaila Hydroelectric Project and the Airport Project for no good reason. “It has been forced to support enough of the budget to keep the Government alive…Those portions that it rejects, the Government implements anyway by spending sums not initially approved.” He observed too that the Bills that were passed in the National Assembly have not been assented to by the President and the Opposition’s parliamentary resolutions have been ignored. The Public Procurement Commission has not been appointed, while the Alliance For Change’s No Confidence Motion appears stillborn. “Apart from voting down the Government in the National Assembly, it (Opposition) now has no other strategy,” according to Ramkarran. He posits that the Opposition now has the challenge of devising a new strategy. “Enormously popular, with a great mobilizing capacity, would be the call for national unity through a coalition government, if placed at the top of its political agenda…It must have dawned on the Opposition, and all Guyana by now, that full emancipation and liberation cannot be achieved unless all are fully represented in and have a stake in the governance of Guyana.” He said too that the Opposition must know that the majoritarian impulse in liberal democratic theory is obstructive of the ‘legitimate expectation(s)’ of large minorities in any country. Ramkarran observed that if one section of Guyana feels excluded from governance, the other section(s) is insecure and the whole of Guyana is destabilized. “We experienced just that in the 1970s and 1980s.” Ramkarran posits that the demand for a system of governance in Guyana which empowers all Guyanese must be elevated squarely onto the top of the political and civic agenda as the dominant political and civic issue of the day facing Guyana, requiring a united, national effort.