Local Government Elections (LGE) are finally on the cards – March 18, 2016. With the last scheduled LGE’s supposed to have been held in 1997, Guyanese will have been waiting for 19 years, if this one actually comes off next March. We have had a checkered history on LGE’s even though our began when the “Free Village” movement introducing Village Management Councils immediately after the purchase of abandoned plantations in 1838. While there were sporadic tinkering with the laws governing the Village and Town Councils, in 1932 a decentralised system of administration via District Commissioners was introduced. LGE were scheduled to be conducted in stages during 1970 but the PPP claimed the initial phase was rigged like the 1968 General Elections, and refused to participate further. The PNC ended up controlling all entities. In 1973, the year in which the General Elections were rigged with the assistance of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), the District Commissioner System was abolished and replaced by a nebulous “Ministerial Regional System”. This started the degutting of the historic autochthonous Village Councils that had served the country so well, while empowering the local people. The Village Councils had been robust bastions of democracy in service of citizens at a level to which they could relate, while the new “Ministerial” system moved power upwards, without improving performance. The tradition of leaders moving to national leadership from the incubator of the Villages was sundered. With the 1980 Constitution expanding the “regional” system from six to 10; six towns and 65 Neighbourhood Councils (NDC’s) were recognised by the Local Democratic Organs Act and demarcated to “take democracy to the people”. While there was much rhetoric about the improvement in democracy, the agglomeration of several villages into each NDC ensured that the “principle of subsidiarity” – where power is exercised at the lowest possible level – was vitiated. But even though General Elections were held in 1980, 1985 and 1992, the next LGE after the fatally flawed one of 1970, was finally conducted under the PPP government in 1994. In those elections, the empowerment of the local organs was overshadowed by the contest to control Georgetown. A new party, the “Good and Green Georgetown” (GGG), formed by Hamilton Green who had been expelled from the PNC, contested. The GGG received 40.7 per cent of the votes with 12 seats; the PNC 31.7 per cent – 10 seats and the PPP/C 26.7 per cent – eight seats. In an early attempt at “power sharing”, there was an informal agreement for a PNC’s candidate to be Mayor for one year, the GGG’s next, to be followed by the PPP’s. As second in line, Greene refused to step aside for the PPP’s nominee and remain as Mayor to this day. The PPP won Anna Regina, Rose Hall and Corriverton while the PNC secured Linden and New Amsterdam. The PPP/C won more than two thirds of the 65 NDCs since the PNC did not overtly contest those NDC’s. One notable feature of the 1994 LGE was the formation of some 17 citizens groups entering the race yo run the NDC’s. The overall voting participation was 47.91 per cent but in Georgetown was down to 33.37 per cent. In most other areas it was in the high 50’s and 60’s with some more than 70 per cent. Georgetown voters represented approximately 23 per cent of the total number of eligible voters in the country. Following the constitutional reform process in 2000, the Local Government Act was amended to give more powers to the NDC’s. While there was a bipartisan PPP/PNC committee to craft the necessary legislation to give effect to the need to make the NDC’s “autonomous”, these were finally passed by Parliament in 2013 and signed into law this year. The pertinent changes had to do with the fiscal powers delegated. However, while there are three additional towns, the mooted re-empowerment of the Village Councils died on the vine. And maybe with it, the opportunity to return “power to the people”.