I write in response to a letter penned by Christopher Ram entitled “The Minster of Local Government should not have control over local authorities and their elections,” Stabroek News 11/03/2010.
In this letter, Ram refers to the proposed sale of a playground at Nandy Park, a situation in which he said that the Minister displays “a regrettable ignorance of the law”. However, what got me totally baffled is how he arrived at the conclusion that the Minister should have no control whatsoever, in the electoral system.
Let me just say in relation to the playground issue, that the Local Government Ministry and the PPP Government as a whole are accused almost on a daily basis of so-called corruption and lack of transparency.
However, now that steps are taken to correct obvious unlawful transactions of government resources, in this case an audit that was made very public, the administration is still being attacked and is further accused of abusing their authority.
The minister even clarified that even though it is true that ministerial authority was delegated to the various NDCs at different points in time, it does not mean that he has divested himself of the authority.
Further, in relation to removing Ministerial authority from the electoral system, I would just like to remind Mr. Ram that he of all people should know that you can’t go around stripping democratically elected individuals of the duly constituted authorities, particularly on the basis of his opinion.
Ram and those of his ilk need to make up their minds; they seem bent on having the Government hanging on a “damn if you do, damn if you don’t” scale instead of carrying out their mandate for the betterment of Guyanese.