The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

DESPITE pledges from the major political parties, not enough has been done to empower local governments on the Family Islands or to decentralise power in New Providence, former Attorney General Alfred Sears said over the weekend.

He called for a more “effective national system of local government”.

Since his ratification earlier this year as the PLP’s nominee for the Fort Charlotte constituency in the next general election, Mr Sears has released a series of policy proposals that he intends to champion if he becomes a member of the government.

Although he was prompted to return to front-line politics at the urging of PLP members who sought to replace Dr Andre Rollins in the Fort Charlotte constituency, he is determined not to simply join the party’s ranks but, he told The Tribune yesterday, to “sharpen the party’s vision”.

For a high-profile member in the party, he has displayed an unusual willingness to criticise the government when he believes it has inadequately delivered results on certain issues – hitting out at “successive governments” for not facilitating more local government, for example.

Some of his ideas will be incorporated into the PLP’s policy platform, party Chairman Bradley Roberts said yesterday.

Mr Roberts said he recently appointed Mr Sears to the platform committee, where he will have the chance to shape the party’s ideas.

“I’ve had four years of reflection in terms of helping to sharpen our party’s way forward,” Mr Sears told The Tribune yesterday. “We need to sharpen our vision so we can more effectively address the concerns and to better seize and exploit the opportunities that exist for a more sustainable path for development and cohesive civil society.”

Regarding local government, he said in his weekend statement: “In the Bahamas, there have long been public pronouncements by both major political parties that government is best when it is nearest to the people. However, there has been a continuing reluctance on the part of successive governments to devolve power to the people to make crucial decisions within their communities.”

The process of devolving power, he said, has been “tentative”, mainly taking the form of school boards, “the Public Hospital Authority (PHA), the Bahamas Maritime Authority and partial Local Government”.

“The highly centralised Bahamian state apparatus, inherited from the British without much respect for the attendant conventions, was designed to control a slave population and ensure colonial exploitation,” he said. “Given this history, a decolonised and sovereign nation state must be engaged in a continuing process of decentralising public power and empowering its citizens to create safe, prosperous and sustainable communities.”

Mr Sears argued that the scope of local government, which mostly involves tasks like maintaining roads, cleaning public parks and ensuring safety around schools, needs to be broadened so it can be used to stimulate local economies and address other concerns.

As an example of a change that he believes must be made, Mr Sears said local government authorities “should be permitted to raise revenue”.