By Mark DaCosta-According to a statement issued by the A Partnership for National Unity/People’s National Congress Reform (APNU/PNCR) coalition, the governing People’s Progressive Party (PPP) administration has overstepped its authority by scrapping tolls on the Kara Kara Road, effectively stripping the Linden Town Council of a source of revenue.
The coalition further maintained that the Government used a jointly signed communiqué with Linden’s Mayor to shift responsibility for the Council’s financial and administrative problems onto elected councillors, while overlooking what it describes as the central role of the PPP-appointed Town Clerk in the Council’s dysfunction.
The coalition maintains that the Minister Priya Manickchand, who has responsibility for Local Government had no legal standing whatsoever to strike down the toll. As the statement bluntly puts it: “She has no authority to do so.” Tensions escalated after the Mayor of Linden, Dominque Blair, went public with his concerns, prompting an invitation to meet the President and culminating in a joint statement that the coalition characterises as nothing more than a government-drafted political tract dressed up as consensus.
At the heart of the dispute is a fundamental confusion, the coalition argues, between the Council itself and the Council’s administrative arm. It insists: “The Government must stop confusing the Council with the Council Administration.” The elected Councillors constitute the policy-making Council, it explains, while the routine running of municipal business falls to the Town Clerk and the bureaucracy under his charge. On this point the coalition is emphatic, declaring that “corruption at the Council must be placed squarely at the feet of the PPP and the Town Clerk.”
This distinction matters enormously when it comes to the much-publicised backlog in the Council’s audited financial statements. The coalition contends it would be dishonest to hold elected Councillors responsible for the preparation, upkeep and auditing of accounts, since those functions rest with the chief administrative officer.
Far from resisting scrutiny, it notes, the Council itself requested an audit, recognising that its books needed proper examination. Yet those efforts, it says, were repeatedly obstructed by the very administrative breakdown the Government now seeks to attribute to the Councillors.
The coalition professes itself entirely comfortable with independent financial scrutiny, insisting: “We have nothing to fear from an audit.” Indeed, it declares: “Let the audit decide the facts.” It argues an audit should determine the true state of the accounts, revenue received, spending undertaken, outstanding debts, the adequacy of financial controls, and precisely which officers bear responsibility.
What it will not countenance, it says, is the authorities declaring the Council guilty in advance of any findings, asserting: “What we reject is the Government’s attempt to prejudge the outcome of an audit and politically convict the elected Council before the facts are proven.” In its view, the eventual findings will confirm that “the facts will place responsibility for the mismanagement of the Council squarely at the feet of the PPP and the Town Clerk.“
The statement recounts alleged episodes in which the Town Clerk walked out of Council and committee sittings, hobbling the institution’s statutory work, and claims he routinely ignores decisions properly taken by the elected body. The coalition therefore poses an awkward question to the administration: if it is genuinely troubled by how the Council functions, why has there been no inquiry into the officer at the centre of the complaints? It is demanding a formal, independent investigation into the Town Clerk’s conduct and performance, including his alleged refusal to participate meaningfully in the Council’s work.
The cheque-signing affair has deepened the row. The coalition alleges that when Councillors identified financial and administrative irregularities requiring correction, the Town Clerk declined to sign certain cheques. Rather than backing the elected members’ push for tighter financial discipline, the Government intervened and, in the coalition’s words, “torpedoed” their position by overriding the decision.
This, the statement argues, exposes a glaring contradiction: a Government that claims to want tighter oversight of the Council’s finances undermined the Council precisely when it attempted to exercise greater caution. “The people of Linden deserve an answer,” it declares.
The toll cancellation, the coalition argues, compounds the injustice. It notes the Council had proposed halving the existing charges, a measure the Government itself conceded would not harm the Council’s cash flow or burden the private sector, yet this middle path was spurned in favour of outright abolition. Stripping away the toll, the coalition warns, deprives the municipality of legitimate income at a time when the very same administration condemns the Council’s finances as deficient.
Beyond the immediate quarrel over fees, the coalition frames the episode as a test of local democracy itself, asking whether the PPP/C genuinely respects the constitutional and statutory role of elected local authorities. The people of Linden, it reminds us, chose their Councillors to speak for them; they did not elect a Minister to run their town by decree.
The coalition vows to resist any effort to hollow out elected local government, strip Councils of rightful revenue, meddle arbitrarily in their decisions and then fault Councillors for the fallout of that meddling. Accountability, it insists, must never be wielded as a political weapon, and the truth — not a government-scripted narrative — is what the people of our nation deserve.
