I am to­day agree­ing with those who are con­tend­ing that there is much at stake in the up­com­ing Local Govern­ment Elec­tions, but not en­tire­ly for some of the same rea­sons cur­rent­ly dom­i­nat­ing elec­tion talk.

For me, there are no ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences be­tween the main com­bat­ants to ren­der elec­toral re­sults, un­der the cur­rent cir­cum­stances, ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing se­ri­ous change.

It is, how­ev­er, true that both main con­test­ing par­ties will soon face stur­dy tests of their elec­toral pop­u­lar­i­ty and ap­peal. But this will hard­ly be re­flec­tive of a broad “ref­er­en­dum” on pop­u­lar po­lit­i­cal sen­ti­ment. Had that been the case, the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion re­sults would have been quite dif­fer­ent­ly con­fig­ured, giv­en what oc­curred dur­ing LGE 2019.

It would al­so be quite dif­fi­cult to eval­u­ate the mean­ing of this if vot­er in­ter­est fol­lows re­cent pat­terns. If any­thing, the voic­es of lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tors over the years have dis­tin­guished them­selves by their si­lence. That, to me, has been the most in­struc­tive out­come of such polls.

In 2019, for ex­am­ple, vot­er turnout was un­der 35 per cent (34.49 to be pre­cise). The UNC earned the high­est num­ber of votes with just about 54 per cent of that 35 per cent and the PNM a lit­tle over 43 per cent of the same low num­ber of peo­ple who cared to vis­it the polling sta­tions.

Three hun­dred and thir­ty-nine can­di­dates (in­clud­ing 8 in­de­pen­dents) con­test­ed 139 elec­toral dis­tricts. So, there was no ap­par­ent lack of en­thu­si­asm by those who wish to oc­cu­py seats at the mu­nic­i­pal ta­bles.

But, what­ev­er the post-elec­tion PR, and un­less you clin­i­cal­ly ex­am­ined re­sults in a se­lec­tion of key dis­tricts and made ob­ser­va­tions about what hap­pened there, noth­ing re­mark­able re­sult­ed to re­flect se­ri­ous par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence.

Yet, the po­lit­i­cal par­ties all ap­peared to be Mon­ty Python’s mor­tal­ly wound­ed ‘Black Knight’ de­clar­ing noth­ing more than a “flesh wound”–“tis but a scratch”– con­cern­ing the low lev­el of in­ter­est by the elec­torate in the con­test. Go watch that clip from Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail to get the gist of what I am say­ing.

Even the en­tire­ly clue­less small­er con­tes­tants found time to proud­ly ex­hib­it arm­less and leg­less ev­i­dence of com­bat­ive rel­e­vance.

It has, of course, been au­thor­i­ta­tive­ly de­ter­mined over the many years of mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions that re­sults in these con­tests are not in­elas­ti­cal­ly tied to good or bad for­tunes at times of par­lia­men­tary con­tests.

Par­lia­men­tary in­cum­ben­cy is of­ten not an in­di­ca­tion of mu­nic­i­pal dom­i­nance, what­ev­er the mis­align­ments be­tween the ge­og­ra­phy of “re­gions” against the bor­ders of “con­stituen­cies.”

There have been oc­ca­sions–such as in 2019, when the UNC won the pop­u­lar vote, for ex­am­ple–that have been fol­lowed by a re­ver­sal of vot­er share at the Gen­er­al Elec­tion. This hap­pened in 2020.

There is al­so the so-called “per­for­mance” fac­tor. Peo­ple do not gen­er­al­ly ac­knowl­edge, on a dai­ly ba­sis, the par­lia­men­tary func­tions of MPs as law­mak­ers. They rou­tine­ly turn to them for the mean­ing­ful but “small” mat­ters of garbage col­lec­tion, drainage main­te­nance, and the like. Things that make a crit­i­cal, im­me­di­ate dif­fer­ence to the qual­i­ty of their lives.

The na­tion­al politi­cians, in turn, are then of­ten judged on their abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress such is­sues. This is fair enough, giv­en the na­ture of our po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns. But it re­flects a no­tion of cen­tral au­thor­i­ty that all po­lit­i­cal sides have ad­mit­ted to be­ing not the very best thing.

Cor­re­spond­ing­ly, lo­cal gov­ern­ment con­tests are of­ten framed in the pub­lic eye to re­flect broad­er “na­tion­al” con­cerns and cam­paigns are ac­cord­ing­ly de­signed to pro­mote such mat­ters.

I would, how­ev­er, con­tend that our elec­tors have all along been op­er­at­ing along dif­fer­ent, but self-in­ter­est­ed, tracks. Had pur­port­ed pub­lic dis­con­tent on the na­tion­al is­sues been re­flect­ed in the 2019 elec­tions, the first sign would have been a venge­ful vot­er turnout in 2020 … as oc­curred at the na­tion­al lev­el in 1986, for in­stance … and then again in 1991, al­beit to a less­er de­gree.

Let’s face it. The coun­try has ef­fec­tive­ly been short-chang­ing it­self on a main pil­lar of self-gov­er­nance–if that is what we re­al­ly want. We have per­pet­u­al­ly re­lied on means to achieve re­sults in the ab­sence of broad par­tic­i­pa­tion, with a pref­er­ence for im­pe­r­i­al, cen­tral con­trol.

Re­form­ing our sys­tem of lo­cal gov­ern­ment is thus much more than tin­ker­ing with the me­chan­ics of how it works. I think the pre­scrip­tions to achieve that are pret­ty much set­tled. The big­ger task sig­nals a quan­tum leap from de­pen­dence to a state of in­de­pen­dence.

Pass­ing the ba­ton of pow­er and ac­count­abil­i­ty to lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties and their politi­cians sig­ni­fies the re­al rev­o­lu­tion. “Win­ning” or “los­ing” elec­tions has not turned out to be im­por­tant in this re­spect.