Local Government — Nicolette Bethel

Two years ago I was asked to sit on a government committee that was formed to look at establishing local government for New Providence.

Maybe I shouldn’t say this, given political parties’ apparent inability to work with one another for the good of the citizenry as a whole, but I had earlier been asked to attend meetings hosted by the IDB exploring the issue. The very first documents we received had been generated by the IDB consultant on this issue. So this is not a new concept.

Further, most countries in the world—indeed, all functioning countries—have local government. In other words, most functioning countries separate the powers and responsibilities assigned to different political and civic authorities. There are national-level politicians, whose primary purpose is to create legislation on behalf of the citizens they represent. And there are local politicians, whose primary purpose is to put in place basic amenities and oversee the kinds of things that make life bearable at the local level of the citizen.

The Bahamas has only one type of politician: the national-level ones. But we also place high expectations on those politicians—expectations that on one level (the level of our personal need and comfort) are entirely reasonable, but that on another level are entirely misplaced. They’re misplaced because we have no room in our system that obliges or enables the politicians we elect to the House of Assembly to fulfil those expectations. MPs are legislators who are selected by smaller segments of the population, organized in constituencies. In simple language, they write laws. That’s it. While they may inform the legislative process by speaking on behalf of the people who elected them, MPs are responsible to the nation as a whole. They are not local government officials, responsible to the communities they serve. It’s best to be clear on this right now.

It’s best to be clear on this, too: We need local government officials to make our country function for the citizens.

So when the Minister of Local Government decides, unilaterally, not to advance a government-mandated report prepared by a government-established committee to fulfil a critical election promise by the political party who nominated him to represent a constituency, he is betraying us all. He does not have the luxury of personal opinion. He serves the citizenry. And local government is what we need.