Power intoxicates men. When a man is intoxicated by alcohol, he can recover, but when intoxicated by power, he seldom recovers. — James F Byrnes

THE postponement of the local government election is no surprise to me. In an article on December 28, 2014 I wrote that sources in the PNP made it clear that no elections would have been held in 2015. “I am told by a John Chewit that there will be no local government election this year [2015]. Instead, the PNP will focus on a rescue plan patterned on how Romans emperors would create massive distractions [the games at the colosseum, also known as the Flavian Amphitheatre] whenever the empire was threatened.” (December 28, 2014)

This is part of the reason close to a billion Jamaican dollars have been set aside to fuel and repair the carburettor-dependent engine of the Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme.

“KINGSTON, Jamaica (JIS) — Under Component Five of the Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme (JEEP) a total of $929.95 million has been budgeted to undertake various initiatives across the island. Making the disclosure during a recent sitting of the House of Representatives, Minister of Transport, Works, and Housing Dr Omar Davies said the projects, which are currently being developed, will be undertaken in financial year 2015/16.” (Sunday Observer, May 31, 2015)

When Paul Burke, general secretary of the People’s National Party (PNP), told the country in January this year that a local government election was likely, consistent with legal requirements for their holding, I treated his announcement as jest. Those who don’t suffer from permanent convenient amnesia will recall that the P J Patterson Government postponed local government elections for some eight years, ostensibly to facilitate reforms. The truth is, I believe they were repeatedly postponed to suit objectives of political expediency. It is no different today.

No surprises here! Remember, minister of land, water, environment and climate change and life chairman of the PNP, Robert Pickersgill’s prognostication: “We believe it is best for the PNP to form the government, therefore, anything that will lead us or causes us to be in power is best for the PNP and best for the country.” Anything must then include the butchering of the constitution.

There is no reform happening in local government, and none will likely happen unless those in power/authority with the specific responsibility are compelled by mass positive social action. Why has there been little or no reform of local government? The answer is simple: It is not in the interest of those with power to change a system which is a political feeding tree for political hangers-on, lightweights, and journeymen who do little more than sit in wheelbarrows near abandoned construction sites waiting for Friday. The few local government officials who provide meaningful service to their constituents are by far the exception and not the rule.

The reasons proffered by Noel Arscott, minister of local government, last week in Parliament for this most recent rape of our democracy is formulaic claptrap.

Several local studies, and a few funded by international agencies, have been done on how to reform local government in Jamaica. We are not short of studies, and studies that have studied previous studies. An article in the Jamaica Observer of February 6, 2003 testifies to the fact that local government is but a deflated political football. The article was headlined ‘New local gov’t reform proposal’:

“THE local government ministry on Tuesday last gave parish councils a year within which to come up with their own reform proposals, but offered a menu of options ranging from the creation of autonomous municipalities to specially managed town and country regions within parishes.

“Also on offer is a wide base for the funding of local government, including, apparently through the issuance of municipal bonds, although the management was not clearly spelled out.

“A paper tabled in the House by Local Government Minister Portia Simpson Miller also sought to reopen debate on the optimum number of parish councils, suggesting that the Government now has questions about the proposal by Simpson Miller’s predecessor, Arnold Bertram, to collapse the 13 local government authorities into five regional councils.

“In a related statement to Parliament, Simpson Miller told legislators that the Portmore municipality in St Catherine, which will be formally launched this year, will, over the next three years, act as a pilot for other communities seeking similar autonomy in management.

” ‘As the process unfolds we will have the opportunity to study the new structure and the way it works in order to assist other local authorities on the path of transformation,’ Simpson Miller said.

“Tuesday’s presentation was Simpson Miller’s first substantial policy statement on local government since she assumed the portfolio after last October’s general election, and comes against the backdrop of stinging criticisms of the poor performance of the island’s local government system.

“The statement also precedes the local government elections which Prime Minister P J Patterson has said he will call by the end of March.

“But Simpson Miller was pressed by several Opposition legislators about the basis on which the Administration selected Portmore for the granting of municipality status over other towns.

“Opposition members Ed Bartlett and Horace Chang, who represent constituencies including or adjacent to Montego Bay, wanted to know why that city was not given the opportunity to directly vote for mayors in the upcoming local polls.

” ‘The people of Portmore initiated this process…[and] they do not intend to fail,’ she responded. “[But] we have more (consultative) work to do in Montego Bay.

“In her policy document, Simpson Miller told the parish councils that their reform plans were not limited to but should embrace the provisions she has placed on the table. They are:

* a declared municipal area governed by a municipal council and headed by a directly elected mayor;

* town and area councils overseen by standing committees of the city council; and

* business improvement districts and special improvement districts with appropriate structures for their management.

“The document stressed that all management mechanisms had to create space for participation by civil society, such as the present parish development committees and community development committees.

” ‘Within 12 months, all local government authorities will be required to develop a reform plan in accordance with the new policy guidelines,’ the ministry paper stressed. ‘If this plan is not forthcoming from the local government at the expiration of the agreed time period, the Ministry of Local Government, Community Development & Sports reserves the right to intervene to establish such a plan.’

“But the document also noted the Government’s intention to ‘initiate national discussions in order to determine whether the existing 13 local government authorities should be rationalised or consolidated in response to the proposed new municipal structure and also to achieve economies of scale and greater efficiency’.

“Nearly two years ago, Bertram unveiled his proposal for five regional councils and a number of municipalities headed by either elected mayors or hired city managers. But the idea, the latest in a decade of local government reform plans, did not receive the expected rigorous national debate.

“Under the current funding arrangements, parish councils get a share of the property taxes and motor vehicle licence fees collected in their areas. They also have control over all municipal user fees and commercial services.

“But these cover only a fraction of the expenditure by the councils.

“The reform agenda outlined by Simpson Miller would add to the pool of funds from local rates, trade and spirit licences, building and subdivision approval fees, fees for regulatory functions and municipal taxes. Some of these were covered in the Bertram initiative, but there was no specific mention of bonds.

“The local government would continue to get some capital grants from the central government for services such as public cleansing, the fire brigade and the provision of some welfare services.

“In her remarks, Simpson Miller rejected calls for the discarding of the entire principle of local government based on the performance of some parish councils and argued that there were fundamental issues of governance at play.

” ‘Local government is not only about the performance of parish councils,’ she said. ‘It is essentially about the empowerment of our people to direct and manage their affairs…(and) about taking the concept of democracy out of the abstract realm and giving it real, practical and concrete meaning…’ “

The more things change the more they remain the same. They remain the same because that is the sole objective of those in the great house. They remain the same because to do otherwise would be akin to giving the people ‘justiciable rights that would derogate from the sovereignty of Parliament’, which a former PNP minister of finance and one of the framers of the Jamaican Constitution, David Coore, said must never be allowed to happen. In our so-called Westminster model, Parliament and not the people are sovereign. The planter class does not trust the slaves. What a democracy!

But there is another reason that the PNP does not want to hold a local government election now. Sources tell me that recent internal PNP polls show that the party is trailing the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) badly, not just in a few marginal seats but across the entire country. A local government election now would mean a wipeout of the PNP’s hegemonic hold on one of the few reaming pork conduits that has not yet been cut off by the International Monetary Fund. Birdies say significant donors and party ginnigogs are adamant that there must not and cannot be a repeat of 2003, when the JLP wiped out the PNP in the local government polls. Those results hastened the departure of P J Patterson, who made the fateful statement that “Portia was the PNP’s only hope”.

The PNP cannot win a local government election at this time, and they know it. The small matter of the legal requirement that they be held every three years is inconsequential. Remember that it was P J Patterson who glibly told us that “the law is not a shackle”, and Dr Peter Phillips reminded us that “in Jamaica, the man who plays by the rules get shafted”. What a democracy!

In my article of December 28, 2014, I also pointed out that PNP insiders were dreadfully scared about the then imminent negotiations with the trade unions. Why? The scarce benefits and spoils troughs have dried up and Cinderella borrowings to create the façade of wealth consistent with socialist doctrine are no longer possible. “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” said Margaret Thatcher.

Notwithstanding the tremors in the public sector negotiations and familiar failure of the PNP to grow the economy, sources from the inner sanctum of the PNP have reiterated that elections in 2015 were never really on the cards, despite the public remonstrations of Paul Burke. In the words of one Birdie, that was just “political gimmickry”.

Birdies are adamant that 2015 has been earmarked for the re-engagement of the PNP with its core. The Birdies are on pins and needles because they say the core, like wandering and shepherdless sheep, has gone wayward. So much so that the ‘Direct’ meetings — which the PNP have branded ‘Face to Face’ this turn — that I spoke about in my article of December 28, 2015, have come upon a spanner in the works. Birdies say the message is just not resonating and many are mortally afraid that another October 30, 1980 is imminent.

Talking about democracy, I was less surprised than most with the contents of the most recent United States Department of State report on Human Rights in Jamaica. Again, the more things change the more they remain the same. During last week, I heard a great deal being made — and rightly so — of the segment which stated that the Government of Jamaica has been monitoring the private communications of citizens: “The Government did not restrict or disrupt access to the Internet or censor online content. There were credible reports, however, that the Government monitored private online communications without appropriate legal authority. According to the International Telecommunication Union, 38 per cent of citizens used the Internet in 2013.” (US Department of State Report 2014)

No surprise here at all. This is familiar and consistent territory for the PNP. Most political science texts will tell you that socialist governments, because of their innate fear for the masses, albeit that they pretend it’s the reverse, employ elaborate and often clandestine schemes to measure, monitor and marginalise those that do not support their world view.

“The 2011 Charter of Rights amendment to the constitution prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, place of origin, political opinion, colour, or creed. The Government generally enforced these prohibitions, although there continued to be widespread discrimination based on party affiliation in the distribution of scarce governmental benefits, including employment, particularly in the poor inner-city communities.” (US Department of State Report 2014)

To remind ourselves of an example where the PNP spied on the private communications of its citizens and were caught in the act, we need not go back to the 70s. Do you remember the name Roderick ‘Jimmy’ McGregor? If you do not, you should. Why? Ignorance is seldom bliss.

Mark Wignall wrote an interesting column last year that reminded us of a sordid episode in our history: “In the late 1990s, when super spy Roderick ‘Jimmy’ McGregor was appointed by then Commissioner of Police Francis Forbes to head an intelligence-gathering outfit called the Special Intelligence Unit (SIU), ‘Jimmy’ went to sea on wiretapping the phones of senior policemen, politicians, well-known political activists with suspected criminal links, and community dons otherwise known as area leaders.” (Sunday Observer, March 9, 2014)

For those who say the Government of the day did not know about the operations of McGregor, God bless you!

A ‘no’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble. — Mahatma Gandhi

Garfield Higgins in an educator and journalist. Send comments to higgins160@yahoo.com