Martin Henry

What Prime Minister Golding has left out of his Cabinet is of far greater significance than the size and cost of it and who is in it. The media, pretty generally, has exhausted itself and has sought to exhaust us on the size of the Cabinet and on Mr. Don Wehby's presence in it with private sector connections. The much studied agenda-setting and framing roles of media are awesome and should be used with the greatest balance and fairness as possible.

Golding did not name a Minister of Local Government. And, that has to be one of the most important early moves of his Government. But hardly an analytic word. The Prime Minister has loudly declared in word and deed that central government has no business managing the affairs of local government through a controlling Ministry of Local Government. Mr. Golding participated in the Government of the 1980s which castrated local government. And the non-inclusion of a Minister of Local Government in the Cabinet must be seen as a significant element of the new and different politics which led Golding to the formation of the NDM and which he says he has brought back with him to the JLP.

A slow, tedious and half-hearted Local Government Reform process has been running for years. Local government must mean real power to parish councils, including the power to collect and to spend revenue for the provision of services and for local development. The recommendations of the National Advisory Committee for Local Government Reform included several on financing.

Just as how central government has felt free to postpone local government elections at its whim, so it has felt free to ignore even the decisions conveyed in its own Ministry Papers for the reform of local government. The NAC, for instance, implored in its recommendations that: "The commitment contained in Ministry Paper 8/93, to give local government direct control over the sources of revenue allocated for its financing, need to be honoured. This is critical to attaining the goal of financial autonomy." In 2007, 14 years later, this is still a matter shamefully outstanding. A Local Government Reform Unit has been in operation since 1994.

Finding little support during consultation for "regionalisation", the NAC has recommended that: "The present structure of local government, with the parish as the administrative unit, should be retained. This is the overwhelming sentiment of nearly all groups consulted, and is supported by the finding that the weaknesses identified in respect of the existing system are not related to the structure of local government per se, but rather with operational issues and the political and policy environments within which local government functions.

Out of order stance

"Efficiency" was ostensibly a major issue in the constriction of parish councils in the 1980s. This was an out of order stance. Effective governance can't be just about 'saving' money; the same sort of argument which drove opposition to the size [and cost] of the Golding Cabinet. There is a pronounced social function of government which is impossible to fit on to a balance sheet and from which central government is not exempt. On another note, property taxes which are earmarked for local government are very poorly paid with high levels of delinquency. Give the parish council collection powers and see what happens with enforcing compliance!

The NAC, from its wide consultations, has recommended that local government be entrenched in the constitution. "This is necessary", the Committee said, "to ensure that local government is protected against arbitrary actions by central government, and that it is not treated as a creature of central government. It would also give local government clearly defined functions, and the right to raise and spend its own revenue, as well as to ensure that certain sensitive provisions regarding the local government system, such as the holding of local government elections, could not be changed by a simple majority of Parliament.

Prime Minister Golding has signalled, by what he didn't do with his Cabinet, that his Government intends to pay serious attention to the several and long-standing recommendations for the reform and strengthening of local government. This has to be as important as anything else he has yet done or said.