Editorial | Local government fracas

The fracas that caused the intervention of the police and the premature abandonment of the recent annual general meeting (AGM) of the Association of Local Government Authorities (ALGA) was unseemly.

Indeed, as the local government minister, Desmond McKenzie, observed, the brawl left a blot on Jamaica’s system of local government, which, as The Gleaner often points out, has long been in an uphill battle for legitimacy.

“None of this benefits the Jamaican people, and I am calling for an immediate restoration of order to the administration of public business at the local level,” Mr McKenzie said in a statement.

While this newspaper agrees broadly with the minister’s sentiment, and looks forward to the timely reconvening of the ALGA conference, we expect, too, a full accounting of not only what transpired 10 days ago, but of the circumstances that caused the tensions in the organisation, which boiled over at the AGM.

CALM AND MATURE FASHION

The imminence of national election and the jockeying for political advantage notwithstanding, this should be done in a calm and mature fashion so that trust between the councillors who serve in local government can be rebuilt, and that the people who they are supposed to serve can have confidence in their stewardship, and belief in their commitment to good governance, accountability and the democratic process.

Winning citizens’ trust will not be easy, given the low level of confidence Jamaicans have in politicians and political institutions, which is worse at the local government level, where the system and its representatives struggle for respect and legitimacy.

Indeed, most Jamaicans look to the central government for services that are ostensibly the remit of the municipal corporations, mostly because municipal councillors tend to cede their authority to the members of parliament (MPs) for the constituencies within which their electoral divisions fall, particularly if the MP is of their party.

Developments in ALGA, including the incident at the AGM, mostly reinforced this perception of the sublimation of municipal councillors to their national parties, rather than being driven by the interests of their divisions. This is reinforced by an absence of clarity over what caused the break-up of the AGM, or rather, the legal strength of either side of the argument.

ALGA is, or was intended to be, a cross between an institution that promotes the value of local government and the interests of the island’s municipal authorities, and a trade union for the councillors who serve on them – all of whom were elected on the tickets of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) or the People’s National Party (PNP).

Conceptually, therefore, ALGA is an important organisation. That is, if the deep partisanship can be held at bay.

After the municipal elections of a year ago, the PNP, which is the Opposition in the national Parliament, won 124 seats in the 13 parish governments, plus the city municipality of Portmore. The JLP won 116 seats in seven of the municipal bodies, but lost one of its seats to the PNP in a by-election in the parish of Clarendon in November.

That is part of the backdrop against which the ALGA general meeting was held, with the PNP’s Scean Barnswell seeking to unseat the incumbent president, the JLP’s Winston Maragh.

WENT AWRY

Things apparently went awry when Mr Maragh moved a motion to change the order of the meeting to bring the election higher on the agenda.

“Our PNP members thought to themselves that they would have been outvoted at that time, and so they decided to bring the meeting into chaos,” Mr Maragh said.

A microphone was dragged from his hand. A fracas ensued. The police were called.

Mr Barnswell has implied that Mr Maragh’s actions were not in good faith and that the entire process breached ALGA’s constitution. “We said ‘President, you can’t move into an election before you deal with these important matters, which is your report, but more so the financial statement report’,” he said.

Mr Barnswell also claimed information relating to the association’s accounts were not delivered in accordance with its constitution and most members, including himself, saw the meeting’s agenda only on the day of the session.

If Mr Barnswell’s claims are true, and his interpretation of the alleged constitutional breaches correct, they might have been the result of inadvertence. Or, Mr Maragh might have a reasonable explanation, which he should offer.

Indeed, we would be hard-pressed to believe that Mr Maragh would have sought to change the period for the vote to gain a tactical advantage for his party, if it breached the spirit of democracy, knowing the tension it would cause.

In that context ALGA’s leadership should explain, too, why before the aborted one an annual general meet had not been held for seven years, as has been claimed by Mr Barnswell.

The organisations should get these matters out of the way, then place itself on reset, being clear about its mission and the basis for its existence.