We are often told that local government is a small matter: drains and dams, potholes and parapets, councils too minor to bother with. I beg to differ. Local democracy is the oldest thing we ever built in this country, and what was done to it deserves far more anger than it receives.

Go back to 1839. Barely a year after slavery ended, 83 freed men and women pooled their coins, bought Plantation Northbrook, renamed it Victoria, and governed themselves, laying out lots, raising schools and churches, electing their own to manage the common land and drains. That village council was the first thing free Guyanese ever built for themselves. Local democracy is not a footnote to our history; it is the foundation.

Now consider what became of that inheritance. In 1994, we went to the polls and chose our councils. That proved to be the only local government election the PPP held in its twenty-three years in power. From 1994 until 2016, twenty-two years, not a single local election took place. It won general election after general election, yet never let us choose the councils that paved our streets. The excuse, repeated every year, was that the system was being reformed. The talks ran for twenty-two years. Only after the PPP lost office did the APNU+AFC coalition, in 2016, finally bring the people back to the polls.