The expert to assist in the design of an electoral system for the upcoming local government elections was scheduled to arrive here yesterday.
He is Kare Volland, an expert on national and local elections from Denmark and his services are being made available through the United States Agency for Interna-tional Development (USAID). He is the second expert that USAID is making available. The first was Dr Benjamin Riley, who was identified by the local office of the National Democratic Institute and whose services were made available through funds provided by USAID.
Volland will be working with the joint task force on local government reform to devise an electoral system that would allow for groups and individuals to participate in local government elections as well as allow for a direct relationship between the elected officials and their constituencies.
Stabroek News understands that both the PPP and PNCR want a system that allows for the maximum mix of constituency-based elected officials as well as those elected based on a system of proportional representation. Volland's services are being made available as a result of a decision taken at a meeting convened by the Office of the President to determine the inputs necessary to ensure that local government elections are held this year.
At the meeting were members of the donor community, representatives of the Guyana Elections Commission and the PPP and PNCR.
Since then the Elections Commission has said that based on the preparations necessary the local government elections could not be held until next year. As a consequence it now looks as if the elections would have to be deferred until after the general elections in 2006.
Another decision of the task force was the creation of another group to look at the issue of an appropriate system for making fiscal transfers from central government to the local government bodies. Stabroek News has been unable to ascertain if this body has met and the status of its discussions.
In the meanwhile the Canadian International Development Agency is overseeing the conversion of the recommendations so far made by the task force into legislative form being carried out by Professor Keith Massiah SC. Stabroek News has so far been unable to ascertain the status of this project.