Sig­nif­i­cant changes to the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem should nev­er be made with­out mean­ing­ful pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. Yet, the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to cre­ate three new bor­oughs, make Ch­agua­nas a city and re­draw mu­nic­i­pal bound­aries ap­pears to have emerged with lit­tle pub­lic no­tice and with­out a struc­tured process of en­gage­ment with the cit­i­zens whose lives will be di­rect­ly af­fect­ed.

Lo­cal gov­ern­ment is not an ab­stract po­lit­i­cal con­struct. It shapes com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, in­fra­struc­ture, pub­lic ser­vices and rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Changes to mu­nic­i­pal bound­aries there­fore de­serve care­ful scruti­ny, trans­par­ent jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and wide pub­lic dis­cus­sion be­fore they are en­act­ed.

The con­cern is height­ened by the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mand­ing ma­jor­i­ty in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and its abil­i­ty to se­cure pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion in the Sen­ate. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so in­di­cat­ed she does not in­tend to ac­cept amend­ments from in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. While gov­ern­ments have every right to pur­sue their leg­isla­tive agen­da, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic le­git­i­ma­cy is strength­ened, not weak­ened, when pro­pos­als are ex­posed to de­bate, crit­i­cism and im­prove­ment.

Equal­ly con­cern­ing is the po­si­tion of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion. Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis has stat­ed that the com­mis­sion was nei­ther con­sult­ed on nor pro­vid­ed ad­vice re­gard­ing the pro­posed mu­nic­i­pal bound­aries. The in­sti­tu­tion charged with man­ag­ing elec­toral bound­aries has made it clear that it played no role in shap­ing these changes.

The ab­sence of con­sul­ta­tion has left the Gov­ern­ment’s case large­ly untest­ed. The Prime Min­is­ter has ar­gued that lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies con­trolled by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress have his­tor­i­cal­ly re­ceived less sup­port from Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tions and that the re­forms are in­tend­ed to cor­rect long­stand­ing in­equities. If that is in­deed the case, then the Gov­ern­ment should have no dif­fi­cul­ty pre­sent­ing ev­i­dence and sub­ject­ing its ar­gu­ments to pub­lic ex­am­i­na­tion.

In­stead, the vac­u­um cre­at­ed by lim­it­ed con­sul­ta­tion has al­lowed crit­ics to ad­vance a dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tive: that the bound­ary changes are po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed and amount to an at­tempt at ger­ry­man­der­ing. Whether those claims are jus­ti­fied or not, they can­not sim­ply be dis­missed. The surest way to ad­dress pub­lic sus­pi­cion is through trans­paren­cy, ev­i­dence and open en­gage­ment.

There is al­so a broad­er prin­ci­ple at stake. Con­stituents should not learn about ma­jor con­sti­tu­tion­al, elec­toral or gov­er­nance re­forms on­ly af­ter leg­is­la­tion reach­es Par­lia­ment. De­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment re­quires more than par­lia­men­tary ma­jori­ties. It re­quires cit­i­zens to be in­formed par­tic­i­pants in de­ci­sions that af­fect their com­mu­ni­ties and rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

The coun­try has been here be­fore. In 2015, the then-op­po­si­tion PNM cam­paigned on ex­pand­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment pow­ers and grant­i­ng greater au­ton­o­my to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions. While some re­forms were dis­cussed, the promised trans­for­ma­tion nev­er ful­ly ma­te­ri­alised. That ex­pe­ri­ence should re­mind pol­i­cy­mak­ers that last­ing re­form re­quires pub­lic buy-in, not mere­ly leg­isla­tive au­thor­i­ty.

The Gov­ern­ment may well be­lieve these changes are nec­es­sary and jus­ti­fied. If so, it should pause, con­sult and ex­plain. Cit­i­zens de­serve the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­am­ine the pro­pos­als, ques­tion their ra­tio­nale and as­sess their con­se­quences. Crit­i­cal­ly, in mat­ters as im­por­tant as lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, democ­ra­cy de­mands more than pas­sage in Par­lia­ment. It de­mands par­tic­i­pa­tion by the peo­ple them­selves.