Our participation in local govt. elections hinges on reforms – APNU

APNU Parliamentarians Lance Carberry, Ronald Bulkan and Desmond Trotman at yesterday’s press briefing.

Opposition coalition, A Partnership for Unity (A.P.N.U), yesterday insisted that it is unlikely the coalition will be willing to participate in elections until local government reforms become a reality.

The Local Government Elections were planned for this year, after several postponements dating back to the ‘90s.

APNU also slammed the government over moves to “surreptitiously use state resources to place that party in a decidedly advantageous position when the long overdue local government elections are held later this year”.

During its weekly press conference at the Leader of the Opposition’s office, Hadfield Street, APNU said that the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development is pursuing a chaotic and destructive agenda through its “spin twins” Ministers – Minister Ganga Persaud and Junior Minister, Norman Whittaker – with a supporting cast that includes “Permanent Secretary, Mr. Collin Croal and Mr. Pooran Persaud.”

APNU is referring to a move by government to replace several non-functioning Neighbourhood Democratic Councils across the country with Interim Management Committees, a right Minister Persaud has, but which the coalition stressed was being done for the ruling PPP/C to gain control.

“Instead of engaging in soul-searching to determine why the PPP/C regime was rebuffed and rejected by a majority of the electorate, at the 28th November 2011 General and Regional Elections, the PPP/C Administration seems intent on using this Ministry to impose its control over and to subvert the right of citizens to freely choose councillors and officials to manage community affairs and local government issues.”

At the press conference yesterday were APNU’s Lance Carberry, Ronald Bulkan and Desmond Trotman.

APNU noted that the last Local Government Elections were last held in 1994, eighteen years ago.

“Since that time the PPP in government has always postponed the holding of elections on some pretext or the other. This is a serious indictment against the PPP/C regime, which, when it was in opposition, always promoted the value and importance of empowering people, at the level of communities, to manage the affairs of the communities in which they live.”

The coalition officials accused the government, through a series of orchestrated complaints, of replacing NDCs with “party hacks”

“That approach simply will not “wuk”. It was tried before in several NDCs with disastrous consequences. The Ministers are fully aware that, in almost every instance when IMCs were imposed on communities, the persons appointed to replace them were not up to the mark. They were clearly not imbued with the spirit of volunteerism which drives elected local government officials, and in almost every instance they were more interested in ripping off the NDCs and feathering their nest at the expense of community interests and development.”

“There were problems in places like Enmore and Bartica, with in one case, the complainants did not turn up to give evidence against the particular NDC, yet the Ministry is contemplating an IMC. They are going around the country dissolving and dismantling NDCs and replacing them with IMCs in a furtive and non-transparent manner and, in the process, ignoring the will of the majority of citizens whose preference is to elect their own officials.”

“APNU wishes to state its position clearly. It is that citizens want duly elected NDCs, not the PPP’s handpicked IMCs. We call on the Government to get serious and re-commit themselves to the reform of the local government system as recommended by the Task Force, set up by then President Bharrat Jagdeo and the late Opposition Leader, Mr. Desmond Hoyte, in 2001, as the precursor for the holding of Local Government Elections,” Bulkan read from a prepared statement.

“There are numerous cases of incompetence, unaccountability, corruption and others malpractices that the Government should attend to before they seek to undermine the system of local government.

Some priorities would include the following: fixing the Skeldon sugar factory and the Enmore packaging plant; drainage problems on the East Coast; the Amaila falls road project fiasco; the Hope canal escapade; the Supenaam stelling scandal; to name a few.”

“If it is enquiries government is seeking, a few would include extra-judicial killings; phantom gangs; the crime spree; the Roger Khan saga; the Lusignan, Bartica and Lindo Creek massacres; contracts to the new GPC; the Lotto Scam; the illegal use of NICIL funds; the Queens Atlantic/Sanata Textiles Scandal; GGMC; the Polar Beer Scam; the NIS/Clico misadventure, among many others,” the party statement concluded.