Taking… governance to the people

One of the challenges to governance that we in Guyana don’t appreciate enough is how humungous and variegated our land mass is – in comparison to our population!! With a government bureaucracy that gotta be scaled for a population of less than a million people – but spread over an area of over 83,000 square miles that’s larger than England and Scotland!! – how does the government deliver services from Point Playa to Crabwood Creek and Parika to the Pakaraimas and the Rupununi??!!
Even our Coastlands – at best 1000 square miles – presents a challenge since it stretches like a snake for two hundred miles that’s at best 5 miles deep! The PNC had initiated a decentralization plan – along with their new constitution back in 1980 – that was supposed to tackle this problem!! Each of the ten regions was gonna take care of certain services like health and education independently – under the broad auspices of the appropriate central government ministries!!
But like most of Burnham’s bright ideas, this became bogged down due to his compulsion to rule like an absolute monarch of yore – and putting “square pegs in round holes”, loyal party hacks in charge of the regional institutions!! Well, the PPP inherited that system – with all its built-in inadequacies!! In a world where money talks and bullshit walks, none of the local government arms could really deliver much with the symbolic subventions that came their way!!
Of recent, the PPP has taken a welcome step in creating decentralized one-stop facilities that deliver some critical functions like Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) services, National Identification cards, National Insurance Scheme (NIS), licensing, and birth certificates etc!! All of these were centered in Georgetown and folks from our far-flung villages had to laboriously schlep there for those services –sometimes meaning an overnight stay and always meaning an expensive proposition!! They started with three on the Coast – and last week another three in the hinterland. Your Eyewitness expects these to be multiplied exponentially in the coming years. The revolution in communications has played a critical role in making this innovation a reality!!
But your Eyewitness believes that as their massive developmental program continues to be unfurled, the government’s must intensify the implementation of what Burnham refused to do: empower the regional and local bodies – especially with funding and training – to actually provide their own services to locals!! The PPP’s proven its democratic credentials at the national level politically and economically by providing real choices to our citizenry!! The final step will be realized when each citizen gets power in their hands to deal with the responsibilities of citizenship – without depending on “the government” as a crutch!!
Each person will finally experience the challenge of governance!!

…on Devious Delcy
We’ve had time to digest what went down in the Cuyuni last week. Have we called in the Venezuelan ambassador and demanded an explanation?? We know they’ll repeat their usual platitudes about “looking into the matter”! And of course, take the opportunity to get in their licks on their claim to our Essequibo!! But while we should always be the willingness to engage in the diplomatic niceties, in matters like this attack on our troops, we gotta act definitively to defend our national interest!!
Let’s not pussy-foot around the issue – this was nothing more than Devious Delcy’s continuation of the war Mad Maduro declared on us over a decade ago. We don’t need no flambeau to see in bright daylight. By now so many others have confirmed what your Eyewitness pointed out immediately after previous sneaky ambushes: the Syndicators ain’t your garden-variety brigands. They’re an arm of the Venezuelan state in its wild outer fringes – especially on the borders of Columbia and Guyana.
Nail Devious Delcy’s arrogance!!

…Aubrey down
Poor Aubrey…when it rains it pours like a monsoon!! Rejected by those middle-class types who felt he ain’t “leadership material”, he’s now been made irrelevant by a sanctioned dilletante who stole the lumpen element he used to rally!!