Richard Lord

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says in the in­ter­est of democ­ra­cy the PNM should have won more elec­toral dis­tricts in Trinidad dur­ing Mon­day's lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

Ra­goonath spoke at a lun­cheon or­gan­ised by the Port-of-Spain Cen­tral Ro­tary Club at Good­will In­dus­tries yes­ter­day. He said the PNM did not cam­paign as hard as it should have in the elec­tion and had even con­ced­ed de­feat be­fore the polls were opened. He said with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship scor­ing a land­slide 29 to 12 vic­to­ry over the PNM in the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion it would have been good if the PNM had won more seats in Mon­day's elec­tion.

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship scored a record 11 to 3 vic­to­ry at the polls. He said the is­sue for the coun­try now was how would the PP ad­vance the need for re­form of the sys­tem "to make sure we end up with good gov­er­nance and not a creep­ing dic­ta­tor­ship." He con­tend­ed how­ev­er if the leg­is­la­tion to re­form the sys­tem was im­ple­ment­ed it would have fur­ther re­duced the role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

Ra­goonath said the es­tab­lish­ment of Cepep and the URP had tak­en away jobs from lo­cal gov­ern­ment over the years. He said the func­tions of the URP, Cepep and lo­cal gov­ern­ment should have been har­monised but it was not in the in­ter­est of the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment to do that. He said dur­ing the past eight years or so, while the PNM was in pow­er there were no ma­jor com­plaints raised by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly as both Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA were con­trolled by the PNM.

He ques­tioned whether the em­phat­ic vic­to­ry by the PP at both elec­tions would re­sult in the same sit­u­a­tion. Ra­goonath said one of ma­jor prob­lems with the sys­tem of lo­cal gov­ern­ment was that many peo­ple don't know what it was all about. He said there must be a clar­i­fi­ca­tion and re­de­f­i­n­i­tion of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem. Ac­cord­ing to Ra­goonath, the role of lo­cal gov­ern­ment was more than clean­ing drains and re­pair­ing across the coun­try.