THE Democratic Party General Secretary, Mr. Georges Bibi, attended the DUA Executive and Campaign Managers meeting held in Windhoek, Namibia from the 7th to March 9th 2008.
The theme of the conference was 'Effective Local Government and Community/Social Action'. In presenting his country paper, “A Vision of Local Government”, Mr. Bibi made the following remarks:
“Local government is an essential component of the democratic process. It should provide key services whereby the users have the opportunity to exercise some control over their costs and quality and it should also give the people the chance to shape their own immediate environment.
Local authorities should have more responsibility and freedom to set their own priorities in the development and funding of major projects, such as Schools Transport schemes, police/fire stations, Housing etc, rather than having priorities set by the Central Government. The existing structure of Local government in the Seychelles should be reviewed to bring it more closely to the people. Electorates should be consulted for their views on how local services can be improved to better serve their community, thus allowing people to take more decisions themselves over the services they use.
Decentralization of power must be seen as a means of empowering the users in the local community. The central government should be seen at every level as servant and not as master of individual people. Decision-making power should lie with the people themselves; government should limit the degree of control they exert over the people.
Local Government structure which can deliver services more efficiently and effectively should be based on transparency and accountability to the electorates, it should reflect more closely to people's changing needs and wishes in order to build more vigorous and self-sustaining communities.”
Finally, at the end of the conference it was agreed by all parties that candidates representing local government should be of high quality and they should be aware of the needs of the community they represent. Candidates should not be imposed on the people in the local community but should rather go through a rigorous selection process and finally should be selected by the people they represent, unlike the Seychelles where the Mayor of Victoria and the District Administrators are appointed by the central government and imposed on the people without any form of consultation whatsoever.