HGP Nightly News – The We Invest In Nationhood party wants Guyanese to pay close attention. The party has chastised the Government’s decision to seize control of a number of Georgetown’s city streets, warning that what looks like a simple administrative move is actually something far more dangerous; a deliberate and creeping takeover of local power that could permanently cripple the city’s ability to govern itself.
WIN pulled no punches in calling out what it sees as the most glaring problem with the move, the complete absence of any meaningful conversation with the Georgetown Mayor and City Council before it happened. This, the party said, was no accident or oversight. It alleged is part of a pattern, a pattern where the Government makes big decisions affecting local communities without bothering to consult the very people elected to represent them.
The party is also sounded the alarm about what the takeover means for Georgetown’s finances. Streets like Vlissengen Road. The permits, the fees and the revenue that flow from these busy corridors go directly into the City Council’s coffers and help fund the services that ordinary residents rely on every single day.
Hand those streets over to central government, WIN argues, and you hand over that income too, leaving an already cash-strapped council with even less to work with and even less ability to serve its people.
But the party’s deepest concern goes beyond dollars and cents. Local government bodies get their power directly from Guyana’s Constitution. When that power is chipped away, even quietly, even gradually, it is not just a bureaucratic problem. It is a constitutional one. A democracy, WIN argued plainly, simply cannot function properly when the institutions built to represent communities at the grassroots level are being hollowed out from above, one street at a time.
WIN’s message to the Government was direct and unambiguous, stop, talk, and collaborate.
The party stated that national development must be built with local authorities, not over them. The party is demanding immediate and transparent dialogue with the Georgetown Municipality, a clear explanation of what the Government actually intends to do with these streets, and a firm commitment to a style of governance that respects rather than sidelines the role of local government.
