Toshaos’ elections and questionable governance – hopefully this will be treated with urgency

DEAR EDITOR, Communities throughout Guyana have many questions surrounding elections of new village councils which had the statutory deadline of April 2015. While some contributors both on print and social media have raised questions on the timeliness of mandatory financial audits that should be done before holding of Toshaos Elections, I’d like to press on the issue surrounding governance in communities and how the communities have been misled and now find themselves confused. There is correspondence which was sent to all Village Councils dated March 4, 2015 from the Chair of the National Toshaos Council (NTC) making reference to a meeting of December 2014 at which the issue of “rescheduling of Toshaos and Councillors Elections was raised and discussed.”  This letter further requested Village Councils to ‘support the delay to a date to be set in June, 2015’ due to the holding of general and regional elections. What I am pointing out here is the fact there was no consultation with the communities to make such a decision. The people did not participate in such a decision. What we were forced with was an imposition on the Villages and Communities throughout Guyana. Today, in the midst of transitioning of the new administration, we would like to know when these elections will be held. We would like to know when nominations will be held since in some regions, nominations would have already been held during the month of April. Who can guide us as to whether those villages that have not had nominations should go ahead to stage this activity? Varying reports in the different regions are causing confusion. When indeed are audits going to be carried out in the village councils on state funds that they would have received over the years?  There are reports out of residents of various villages that many times they were not apprised of what funds would have been incoming from the previous administration and therefore residents found themselves at a loss as to what they should hold their leaders accountable for. Generally, there has been rampant misappropriation of funds due to lack of transparency and a lack of political will by those in authority to rein in corruption at the village levels. These are just some of the many questions that I wish to table through your media house and hopefully one of the Ministers or all relevant Ministers will treat this as a matter of urgency. We look forward to improved governance for our peoples and for our country. Jeanne Sharon Atkinson Santa Rosa, Moruca