NOMINATION OF 495 candidates for the first municipal elections since September 1998 signals a return to normality in the Local Government system. Under existing legislation Parish Councils, and the KSAC, are supposed to face the electorate every three years; but this has not happened even as spasmodic and unfocused declarations about Local Government reform have held sway.

Recent legislation has established the Portmore municipality in St. Catherine, presumably as the latest direction in which reform will go. The Portmore poll involving direct election of a mayor by the people for the first time is said to be a pilot for other potential municipalities.

Involved in that arrangement is some degree of autonomy; but the blueprint needs definite indications of sources of adequate funding to transform the theory into reality. Indeed the relationship between the Portmore municipality and the St. Catherine Parish Council will be interesting to watch, particularly as other municipalities are established in other parishes.

Municipal considerations are only a sideshow of these elections, however. Already, the focus of campaigning for the June 19 election day is the national agenda since the General Election of last October. The opinion polls suggest that there is heightened interest compared with the low-key attitudes that normally attend local elections.

Concerns about the state of the nation have already begun to coalesce around the early declarations of the major party leaders. On one hand, PNP Leader P.J. Patterson has exhorted party members not to be defensive about the administration's track record; and on the other hand, JLP Leader Edward Seaga is prompting the electorate to use the elections as a referendum on the Government's performance to date.

Either way, it seems inevitable that these elections will be less about control of Local Government than it will be a sampling of political leaning in the nation at large.

THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.