Do we need local government in Jamaica? Those who seriously ask this question are concerned about 'over-government'.

They have a fear that we have too many layers of government, with possibly overlapping responsibilities, which could be a serious source of waste and inefficiency: two agencies dealing with roads, two agencies dealing with water supplies, and so on. Better to have a tight, efficient central government which does everything well.

During the 1980s the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) lost interest in local government, and threatened to shut down the parish councils. They took public cleansing and the fire brigade away from them, and left the councils with very little to do.

The People's National Party (PNP) in the 1980s launched a programme of local government reform, but never advanced it very far. After winning the 2003 parish council elections, the JLP took a new interest in local government, and now claim to be committed to the reform process.

But, if the truth be told, for decades there has been confusion within the Jamaican government system about the difference in roles between local government and central government. The confusion goes even deeper, because there is conflict and overlap within central government - whether run by the PNP or the JLP - between the function of Cabinet and the function of Parliament.

The Cabinet is the executive branch of government, while the Parliament is the legislative branch of government (Politics 101), but the way we do it in Jamaica, the Cabinet has hijacked the legislature.

All legislation which comes before Parliament is brought by Cabinet ministers. Members of Parliament (MPs) elected by their constituents to go to Parliament to enact legislation which will better the local situation, which will bring about local sustainable development, are reduced to rubber-stamping whatever the Cabinet chooses to set before them (usually with only minor amendments). Our legislators do very little legislating.

Introducing legislation

There are institutional obstacles preventing members of the legislature from introducing bills into Parliament. If a legislator wants to introduce a piece of legislation in the legislature, he has to draft it himself, or pay out of his own pocket a legal draftsman to do so.

In the United States, every congressman and senator has his/her own team of lawyers to help him to draft bills. And even if a legislator is able to introduce a bill in the legislature, it may be given low priority, such that it will take years to get a hearing, and may, indeed, fall off the Order Paper several times, requiring great perseverance to keep it alive.

It is a rare occasion when a bill introduced by an ordinary legislator is debated and passed. In our 45 years as an independent country, has this happened as many as five times? I doubt it!

And so in the Jamaican variant of the Westminster model, Cabinet usurps the legislative role of Parliament; the House of Representatives meets sometimes only once per week to rubber-stamp whatever the Cabinet ministers bring before them.

And so what do the otherwise idle parliamentarians do? They turn around and usurp the role of local government.

MPs have taken upon themselves many things which parish councillors should be doing. MPs deal with repairing roads, cleaning drains, and recommending people for various contracts, and things like that.

MPs even nominate persons to school boards in their constituencies. What does this leave the parish councillors to do? Very little! This is what attracts the comments from well-thinking people that, in Jamaica, local government is superfluous.

'Principle of Subsidiarity'

There is an important principle in law called the 'Principle of Subsidiarity': nothing should be done at a higher level that can be done at a lower level. This promotes democracy, and the participation of civil society in governance. We need local government reform, but first we need to reform our Parliament and we need to reform our Cabinet system of government.

And so we go into another parish council election without having resolved the confusion between what precisely is the role of central government and the role of local government. Can we please have some public discussion on this?