Panday challenges government to call LGE

Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday broke his silence in Parliament Monday and charged that the People's National Movement (PNM) is afraid of the people and suggested that that is the only reason why it wants to postpone Local Government Elections for a fourth time.

And he challenged the PNM to pass proposed reforms and call the election within two months.

"They know that they are very unpopular and they do not want a decisive indicator that their popularity has fallen. And that is why they have postponed this election," he said.

Panday was speaking in the debate of a bill to postpone the election until June 2010. Referring to the reform bill as well, Panday said both pieces of legislation amount to a "negation of democracy".

He said instead of adding to the democratic process, they will achieve the opposite result. Panday noted that the reforms concentrate power into the hands of the Central Government and therefore the councils and cities would have to implement only those projects that fall in line with the priorities of the Central Government policy.

That, he said, defeats the whole point of electing representatives who would be impotent to implement the agenda for which they were elected. "Your planning is at the central level. But the 'experts' are really the people on the ground," Panday said.

In response to the UNC leader Tourism Minister Joseph Ross dismissed Panday's suggestion that the PNM is afraid of the people.

"The PNM is not afraid to go to the polls," Ross said, adding that the country has already assessed the UNC and will not take the party seriously. He said voters know that the UNC cannot manage itself so "they are not going to put them to manage this country."

He said there is no "quick fix" to local government reform, noting that in countries like Denmark the process took five years.

"Local Government is too important a matter to be left in its present state...It would be a sad mistake for us to go into the local government election and come back to complete reforms. That would be starting at the wrong end," Ross declared.

That's an argument that Chaguanas MP Jack Warner dismissed, arguing that the postponement of the election is an infringement on the democratic and constitutional rights of citizens.

He stressed that reform should never be used as a reason for extending the life of councils and denying voters their rights. That, he said, is a mockery and amounts to "a scandalous attack on our democracy".

Read the story: Warner says postponing LGE is assault on democracy