The government will need to make a decision soon about holding local government elections next year if it wants to have them before the 2006 general elections.

Local government elections were last held in 1994 and a consequence of this long hiatus is that the periodic mayoral elections have not been held and the original members of some neighbourhood democratic councils are no longer active, having either resigned or passed away.

During this period too, the Minister in the Ministry of Local Government has been installing his choices to head a number of local government bodies. Sources knowledgeable about the work of the Elections Commission tell Stabroek News that both elections could be held between now and 2006 but a decision has to be made this year.

The May 6 communique anticipates local government elections being held next year as it envisages the necessary legislation based on the agreed reforms being taken to the parliament within a six-month time-frame.

However, the joint task force on local government has yet to complete the task within the two-month deadline the May 6 communique has set.

Elections Commission chairman, Dr Steve Surujbally has told Stabroek News that he is planning to undertake a national registration exercise next year and his commission’s budget would provide for that. He says that he expects that the joint task force would submit its report in the next eight to ten weeks.

Surujbally did not expect that there would be a significant impact, apart from the voter education programme, on his preparations. He attributes that to the fact that until the commission knows what is the electoral system to be used it would be unable to design the education programme.

However, Surujbally explained that the task force had received its comments on the various options for an electoral system provided by Dr Benjamin Riley, the electoral expert whose services were made available by the National Democratic Institute.

About the possibility of the electoral system having to cater for the demarcation of the municipalities into wards, Surujbally explains that the demarcation of the wards would have to be determined by the Ministry of Local Government and the information passed to the commission.

He said that the demarcation exercise would not delay the preparations, as the commission would be able to allocate persons to wards based on information gathered from the national registration.

Surujbally is unaware of the stage which the work of the joint task force has reached, and only learned of the intended amendments to a number of laws related to the holding of local government elections from the Stabroek News report about the Ministry of Local Government’s advertisement inviting bids for the contract to draft them.

Local government elections were to be held in 1997. In 1998 they could not be held because of the political upheavals. In the years since the parliament has approved legislation postponing the elections until the task force was appointed in 2001 and given a twelve-month deadline to submit its recommendations. The task force work was interrupted by the suspension of the dialogue last year and only reconvened after the signing of the May 6 communique.

It is to complete work on its recommendations on the electoral system for future local government elections, to determine the terms of reference for an independent constitutional Local Government Commission, and to develop a suitable system and appropriate procedures for compulsory annual fiscal transfers to the local government organs.

Stabroek News understands that the committee is awaiting proposals from the PPP/C in response to those tabled by the PNCR. The PNCR is also to table proposals for the system and procedures for the annual allocation of resources.

Earlier in the month Clinton Collymore, who jointly chairs the task force with PNCR chairman Vincent Alexander, told Stabroek News that the committee had wound down its work and that he was prepared to submit a report of work completed to be followed by a memo on the recommendations of the outstanding matters when those were completed.

This newspaper understands that Collymore has since sent a report to Alexander for his comments.

Earlier this month Alexander wrote Collymore urging that the committee seek an extension of the deadline to complete its work given that the committee did not begin meeting until a month after the May 6 communique was issued.