Dear Editor,
The recent attempt by the Honourable Minister Bishop Juan Edghill, Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, to unilaterally reclassify 22 city streets is a brazen assault on local governance that cannot be allowed to stand. Masquerading as administrative efficiency, this move reveals a disturbing truth: the central government is actively engaged in a campaign to financially strangle, politically discredit, and ultimately dismantle the authority of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC).
Let us be clear about what is at stake. The Minister’s decision to reclassify these thoroughfares—without a shred of prior consultation with the municipal government—is not merely a bureaucratic overstep. It is a seizure of revenue streams that the Council desperately needs to function. The basis and criteria for this reclassification remain entirely unknown to the Municipal Council, leaving the elected body responsible for the city’s maintenance powerless to understand, let alone contest, the financial implications.
Those implications are dire. The reclassification of these 22 roads directly impacts the Council’s ability to generate revenue from billboard permits, street vending licenses, container fees, and municipal traffic violations. In a climate where the Council’s annual income hovers at approximately two billion dollars—half of which is consumed by employment costs alone—these revenue sources are not trivial; they are existential.
The Honourable Minister is acutely aware of the fiscal crisis facing the municipality. He knows that the Council cannot unilaterally revalue properties to expand its tax base; the last valuation was conducted in 1997. He knows that while a residential property in Kitty pays an average annual demand of just ten thousand dollars, the Council is legally obligated to provide weekly garbage removal, drain cleaning, street lighting, road repairs, and maintenance of public open spaces.
Given this context, one would expect sincerity from the Minister rather than political grandstanding. Consider the arithmetic of hypocrisy: over the past five years, the central government has spent more on city roads than the cumulative 10-year budget of the Georgetown Municipality. While the Council is expected to be grateful for this infrastructure spending, the Minister simultaneously uses it as a cudgel to justify stripping the city of its regulatory authority.
If the central government can pour billions into roadworks but refuses to allow the Council to meaningfully increase its revenue or retain control over the infrastructure within its jurisdiction, the conclusion is inescapable: this is not about fixing potholes; it is about fixing control.
To fully grasp the gravity of this situation, we must view it through the strategic lens of Karl Von Clausewitz, the Prussian military theorist who famously defined war as “the continuation of politics by other means.” What we are witnessing is the inversion of that maxim: this is politics as the continuation of warfare by other means.
Clausewitz emphasised the concept of friction—the unforeseen difficulties that paralyse an actor in conflict. By reclassifying these 22 streets, the central government introduces maximum friction into the operations of the M&CC. The Council is now expected to maintain roads and provide services over which it has no regulatory authority and from which it cannot derive revenue. This friction is designed to create a feedback loop of failure: deprive the Council of funds, increase its operational burdens, and then use its inevitable service shortfalls to justify further centralisation.
Furthermore, Clausewitz spoke of the “remarkable trinity”—the interplay of the government, the military (or in this case, administrative arm), and the people. We are seeing this trinity weaponised. Recent outreach efforts by government ministers in areas like East Ruimveldt have devolved into public bashing sessions against the Mayor and City Council. This is not public engagement; it is psychological warfare aimed at eroding public confidence in the Council.
Pointedly, by painting the municipality as incompetent while simultaneously starving it of resources and stripping its powers, the central government is executing a classic strategy of fait accompli—presenting the citizenry with a broken local government and then claiming that only centralised state control can fix it.
Unfortunately, the Council expects a sharp decrease in revenue if this reclassification is allowed to stand. Logic dictates that a decrease in revenue will lead to a decrease in services. When garbage piles up, drains clog, and lights go out, the Minister will have succeeded in creating the very crisis he uses to justify his overreach.
This is a deliberate attempt to erode the authority of an elected body. It is a diabolical plan designed for total domination and control. When a central government treats a constitutionally mandated local government as an enemy to be subjugated rather than a partner to be supported, we are no longer operating within the bounds of cooperative democracy.
We are in a dangerous place. Democracy in Guyana is not just under strain; it is under siege. The unilateral reclassification of these 22 streets must be condemned by every Guyanese citizen who values local autonomy, fiscal sanity, and the principle that those who are elected to serve should have the resources and authority to do so.
If this strategic warfare is allowed to continue, the only casualty will be democracy itself.