Robert Buddan, Contributor
Local government elections are set for December 5. These elections will mark a continuing struggle between the politics that the two parties have employed towards local government over 60 years. The People's National Party (PNP) has won eight of 15 general elections and nine of 12 local government elections and can take much credit for building local government to what it is.
The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has a poor history of commitment to local government. Its most recent attack is to abolish the Ministry of Local Government.
Because of this difference in commitment, local government is treated as the poor cousin of central government. The lack of consensus on what to do about local government means that the momentum for continuous development has been absent.
There is a great irony here. There has never been as great a global consensus on the importance of democracy, including local democracy, and community-based development, as there is today. But in this age of community empowerment there is still little attention to local government issues in the coming elections. The levels of campaign spending, advertisement, and candidate profile are far below that of the general elections just three months ago. Local elections, it appears, will be used as usual as a test of central government's popularity rather than as a test of local government and community issues as it should be used. Why is this?
Top-down traditions
Some British political scholars argue that the British political tradition has always favoured a top-down view of democracy. In that tradition, responsible government is taken to mean government that is willing to take strong, decisive, and necessary action even if the majority of the population opposes those decisions. This gives licence to central government to do what it must because government, according to that tradition, knows what is best. It is this top-down tradition that has shaped our institutions and processes and makes central authorities and even reformers resist radical bottom-up reforms.
But new forces are also reinforcing centralisation. Globalisation leads to pressure towards centralisation because of the influence of transnational corporations, the practice of international financial scrutiny over central budgets, the global fora for negotiating international agreements along with the role of heads of government in regional organisations like CARICOM. These all place new importance on sovereign decision-makers at the level of the central state and above. The need to demonstrate fiscal prudence to international lenders, for example, makes central authorities hesitant about decentralising more spending and revenue powers to local authorities.
Lack of party consensus
But another problem that has yet to be studied in Jamaica's specific case is the lack of consensus between Jamaica's political parties on what to do with local government. This lack of consensus interrupts momentum towards building a strong system of local government whenever Parliaments change.
It took little time after the general elections of 1944 for Alexander Bustamante, leader of the majority party, to say that the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC) should be dissolved. Bustamante claimed that the corporation was politically corrupt, but his real problem was that the KSAC was evenly balanced between the JLP and the PNP. The majority party and the British colonial officials were also culpable of neglect. The PNP complained that the first 10-year development plan (of 1946) made no provision for local authorities even though Kingston and St. Andrew were growing rapidly and the KSAC would need more powers and resources. The neglect continued over the first 11 years. The JLP remained the majority party in the House from 1944 to 1955, while the PNP controlled local government during that time.
During this period, too, governors and their appointees controlled government policies, plans and resources from the centre since it was to the centre that funds from the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund and local taxes went. The PNP complained about attempts to whittle down the powers of local authorities to make it easier for the Governor to get what he wanted and the JLP defended that policy saying that the local authorities were socialist (because the PNP controlled them).
Landowners were also culpable. There had been no land valuation between 1937 and 1958 because land barons had resisted it. Since parochial authorities depended on land taxes for revenue they had been starved of it and had to rely heavily on central government. The only real change to local government was the introduction of adult suffrage for the elections of 1947 to bring it in line with general elections.
It was only in 1955 when the PNP won the general elections (and still controlled local government) that a policy on local government emerged. Florizel Glasspole had noted as early as 1945 that the modern trend towards political development was to give local authorities greater responsibility. Local government was indeed given new status in 1955 when the PNP established a Ministry of Local Government (and Housing) for the first time, under Dr. Glendon Logan. His policy was to give more responsibility to local government. In his conception of democracy, responsibility should begin with the individual moving right up to central government. Local government was to be a part of the PNP's policy of planning and rural development; therefore, local government would be guided by central government, but be more involved in making plans and attracting loans. Land valuation, planned for 1958, would reflect increased property values and make more land taxes available to local government.
Ironically, a new consensus between the parties in 1952, supporting self-government and West Indian federation, did not include and in fact detracted from local government development. The bipartisan committee on the independence constitution gave only partial legitimacy to local government. Different acts made provisions for local elections, but a system of local government was not enshrined within the independence constitution as a permanent part of national government.
Precarious democracy
This has made local democracy precarious. There has been no way to enforce holding local government elections every three years as stipulated. Both parties hold local elections irregularly and sometimes they are not held for as long as five and even eight years. This explains why there have been 12 local elections compared to 15 general elections. The lives of councils have also been precarious. Councils have been arbitrarily dissolved, suspended or reduced in number by the JLP. They have no constitutional protection from Parliament.
The PNP restarted the momentum for local government and community development in 1993 through parish- and community-based committees, direct elections of the mayor of Portmore, municipal status for Portmore, empowering local authorities to give environmental approvals, and promising to entrench local government within the constitution in its recent manifestos.
The JLP said it would abolish the ministry of local government to save money. But it has proceeded to make government more expensive by creating more ministers than had existed before. There is hardly going to be any serious reform if there is no minister to speak in Cabinet or coordinate policy, satisfy stakeholders and integrate local government with community development, especially efforts to build community participation, peace, justice, and economic development. The real cost will be the cost to democracy and community governance.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
