Peter Espeut AS LOCAL Government elections approach, there is the usual debate as to the usefulness of Parish Councils and local government. "We are too small", some say, "to have two tiers of government".
Some want to abolish Parish Councils altogether. During the 1980s, the Saga government moved in this direction by taking away many of their functions, leaving very little for them to do. The next step would indeed have been to banish Parish Councils into the history books, as done by Barbados and Trinidad and our sister Caribbean neighbours.
Others like former Minister of Local Government Arnold Bertram advocated reducing the number of parishes from the present fourteen to five by mergers (similar to the "reforms" of Governor Sir John Peter Grant after the Morant Bay Rebellion, when the number was reduced from 22 to the present 14).
At the same time, that same Minister Bertram advocated the split-off of Portmore from St. Catherine to create a new parish (might it have been called "Bertram", perhaps?) to better manage Kingston's twin city. I gather that the first step in this direction is to be taken soon when Portmore becomes a municipality within the parish of St. Catherine, with its own directly-elected mayor and council.
Speaking for myself, I am neither in favour of abolition nor reduction in the number of parishes or Parish Councils; that is a recipe, I am convinced, to further concentrate power in the hands of a few in central government, and lessen democracy in Jamaica. What is needed is deepening of local government precisely to reduce the concentration of power at the top, and to strengthen democracy.
So far I am not impressed with local government reform. There is still too much confusion between the roles of the MP and the Parish Councillor; local government (and central government) reform must begin by making a clear distinction between their functions (a constitutional reform issue).
Members of Parliament are part of the legislature; their primary role is to make laws which favour their constituents. It is not their business to fix roads and clean drains. That is the role of the Parish Councillor, who operates at the local level dealing with local infrastructure issues.
The trouble is that Cabinet has largely usurped the role of Members of Parliament. All legislation is introduced in Parliament by the relevant Minister or Parliamentary Secretary, and MPs rubber stamp them after cursory debate. Private member's bills have a hard time even getting read in the House. Since Cabinet has usurped the role of Parliament, MPs have usurped the role of Parish Councils. If Parish Councillors come into their own and play their proper role, Members of Parliament will have almost nothing to do! The whole system is in urgent need of reform.
I do not believe local government can be seriously reformed until Parliament is reformed. The Principle of Subsidiary must be adhered to: that no function which may be exercised at a lower level should be exercised at a higher level. And so Parliament should come into its own as the body that really legislates, not Cabinet; and Parish Councils should address parochial issues, not MPs; it was a good move when the practice of MPs sitting on Parish Councils was discontinued some years ago.
If Parish Councils are going to deal with matters such as roads and drains and planning permissions and the like, they should have a regular, substantial source of funding; land taxes and motor vehicle licence fees seem to only be enough to pay the swiftly rising salaries of Councillors and local government officers. Sadly, up until now, local government reform has consisted mostly of the decision to pay salaries to Councillors, and providing the source of funds to pay them.
For me the Principle of Subsidiary must be taken further: local communities must be actively involved in addressing local issues, not just Parish Councils. That will be real local government reform! I like the system where each town or settlement has a council and a mayor, raises its own funds and pursues its own agenda in conjunction with the parochial (provincial) and national government. This quite common model is practised in France, the Philippines and the USA, for example. It remains to be seen whether what is being planned for Portmore is really something new or just a step preliminary to creating a new parish. Will the Municipal Council for Portmore simply be a committee of the St. Catherine Parish Councillors in Portmore, or a separately elected slate of local persons?
In the Philippines, each village (called a Barangay) has a Mayor (a Barangay Captain) and is able to chart their own course. This sort of reform is unlikely in Jamaica, as our central government would never relinquish significant power to local government, never mind to local communities. MPs seek to protect their power base by personally supervising the distribution of political spoils to those who would vote for them. They could never allow their popularity to rise or fall based on their performance in Parliament. They have little role to play there above bench-thumping, and on television they look profoundly bored. Some are notoriously late or absent from the House, and it is a common practice for some MPs to leave the chamber after they are marked present.
There is much that can be left to the community to manage directly. Efforts currently under way to establish stakeholder councils to manage natural resources such as wetlands, forests and fisheries may yet lead to the most profound local government reform to date.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and Executive Director of an environment and development NGO.
