What local election? Vote off again

The House of Representatives begins debate Monday on the Municipal Corporations (Amendment) Bill 2009, which will again delay the Local Government elections in Trinidad and Tobago if it is passed.

The government has already extended the life of all municipal corporations twice. And if Manning gets his way again - as he would, considering his strong majority - then there will be no vote this year. The last local election was in 2003.

When the Manning administration passed legislation last year to extend the life of the corporations and avoid a vote he said part of the delay was the preparation of reforms to make the system more effective.

The government is going to Parliament Monday with the same argument - a delay to allow the completion of the reform exercise listed in a draft White Paper on Local Government Reform, laid in the House of Representatives on Friday.

Political analysts say the government wants to move the Local Government Bill 2009 to a Joint Select Committee to review the proposals, which would be a prelude to the election.

Manning doesn't want an election now because he doesn't want anything to interfere with his agenda, which includes showing off for a second time this year to the international community - at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in November.

The most significant political implication of an extension until 2010 for the opposition is that the United National Congress (UNC) would also put off its long-delayed internal election, giving party leader Basdeo Panday more time consolidate his troops for the election.

But even more significant is the fact that he would remain both party and opposition leader until then.

That won't sit well with opposition MPs Jack Warner, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and Winston "Gypsy" Peters, who are the leaders in a platform for change that is founded on the group's demand for internal elections in the UNC to determine who leads the party and settle other critical administrative issues.

The UNC's national executive has taken a decision that the internal vote will come after the local election, a fact that triggered the divisions in the party between Panday and Warner.

Panday is preparing to lead off the debate on behalf of the opposition on Monday. It's a departure from his new policy to remain silent in Parliament. This would be only his second contribution to the House since Parliament convened following the general election of 2007.

The question that Panday is not answering is whether he would support the postponement, which would work well for him on a personal and political level but won't sit well with elected local government members as well as the general public.

Panday could only count on 11 other MPs to toe the party line; the so-called RAMJACK group won't necessarily go along because they want the local election out of the way so the UNC could get its house in order in preparation for the national election, due in 2012.

The reform bill that Local Government Minister Senator Hazel Manning presented to Parliament last week is making some people nervous.

Manning called it "revolutionary" and she might be right, but to whose benefit?

One principal feature of the planned legislation is for the Chief Executive Officers and other employees of municipal corporations to be appointed on contract.

These appointments would be clearly political because the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government would make the appointments only after they are approved by the minister.

The implications are clear. That would mean that regardless of the outcome of a political vote, the people running the local government system would be hand picked by a cabinet minister who would be able to exert control over these people and arbitrarily terminate their contracts.

While the proposed reform is clear that a whole range of senior personnel would be contracted to the the government on the approval of the line minister it does not say what would happen to current incumbents. Would they be fired and replaced by people who are more politically acceptable?

In the current system CEO's, engineers, health inspectors and other similar professionals are part of the civil service system and are therefore - in principle - not subject to political manipulation. They also have job protection and are hired on the basis of the provisions of the civil service regulations, which do not discriminate on the basis of "political correctness".

The courts made that clear in the case of the Prime Minister Patrick Manning versus Marlene Courdray.

Coudray won a landmark case against Patrick Manning who had arbitrarily tried to transfer her from her post as CEO of the San Fernando City Corporation. Manning's move coincided with the resignation from Cabinet of her spouse, Minister Larry Achong.

In her affidavit Coudray accused Manning of issuing threats against her on at least two occasions. She said he was opposition leader when he first threatened to "deal with her" and she alleged that he made a similar threat when he became prime minister.

The courts decided Manning was wrong and Coudray remained in her post at the City of San Fernando. She went on to fight the PNM in the 2007 general election as a candidate of the Congress of the People (COP) and lost that battle.