THE EDITOR, Sir:
THE TUESDAY, February 7 Internet edition of your newspaper carried a profound commentary by the Reverend Devon Dick. In his article 'Let my people vote', Reverend Dick correctly lam-bastes the Anglo-American version of democracy by highlighting its corrupt tendency to promote the power and control of a few (generally the wealthy whites and their coloured cohorts) over the many (usually the impoverished masses of colour).
REDEFINITION OF LOCAL GOV'T
It is thus with Reverend Dick's mindset that I continue to argue for the redefinition of Jamaica's local government system to include political, fiscally empowered county councils: ones creatively designed to include not only the traditional elected voices of political parties but also selected representatives of socially significant pressure groups.
Thus, in a radical move, county councils would, under constitutional law, see the permanent, proactive partici-pation of such grass-roots entities as: regional higglers and taxi associations; regionally combined chambers of commerce from each parish; regionally combined (traditional) service clubs such as the Kiwanis/Lions/Rotary, etc.; and on certain county-based committees, environmental non-govern-mental organisations (or NGOs).
Selection of grass-roots pressure groups to regional county councils would be based on a combination of membership size and socio-economic impact/ importance. What I would like Reverend Dick and all likeminded progressive/well-thinking/creative Jamaicans to consider is the need to spatially deliver fiscally and functionally-empowered government (closer) to the average citizen in a manner that the grass-roots constituent will be able to exercise increased degrees of control over his or her hard-earned tax contribution to the national fiscal pie.
Reverend Dick and others need to realise that true democracy also includes granting appro-priate levels of political, administrative autonomy to communities in regional spatial configurations (re: counties) that promote critical cost savings and enhanced revenue flows towards empowering the people to quickly address pressing com-munity-based quality-of-life concerns (for example, effective community road repair and garbage collection/disposal) at the crucial local government level.
I am, etc.,
GARFIELD O. WHITTAKER
garfield.whittaker@csun.edu
