After their first year in elected office, many commune council members don’t understand their duties, aren’t communicating effectively with their constituents and don’t have the funds to achieve their goals, a survey recently conducted by the Committee for Free and Fair Elections found.
The survey, which polled 242 commune councilors and 465 constituents in 20 communes in 15 provinces and municipalities, shows that a lack of certainty and coordination are leading to confused and uneven implementation of the government’s decentralization plan, Comfrel Director Koul Panha said Monday.
Replacing centrally appointed commune chiefs with multiparty councils, elected for the first time on Feb 3, 2002, was intended to bring power and responsibility to the local level.
But: “The commune councilors…for the most part don’t seem to understand their work right now,” Koul Panha said.
Only one-third of the councilors said they thought they had a good grasp of the decentralization process, the survey says. Another 30 percent said they understood it “only a little,” 17 percent said it was a matter of “respecting the rule of law” and 21 percent said it was too early in the process to gauge their knowledge.
A great majority—83 percent—of the councilors “felt that there was insufficient funding available to conduct the operations of the commune council.”
By law, the commune councils are supposed to get money partly from the central government and partly by collecting taxes or charging fees for services.
More than half the councilors, 51 percent, “were not sure” where to get funding outside of government allocations. And only one-fourth thought their communes were capable of raising additional funds.
Most of the councilors did say they felt responsible for communicating with their constituents, most—60 percent—through research and visiting villages. Others gathered people in participatory groups or lectured them in explanatory meetings. Only 10 percent “were uncommunicative with the Cambodian citizens they represent,” the survey says.
But not one of the councilors mentioned direct participation—citizens attending council meetings—as is their legal right. And 73 percent of the constituents polled said they never communicated with their councilors.
Some 54 percent of the constituents “did not think that the commune councils could improve their everyday life.”
