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  Conference keynote speakers, presentations and remarks

Rt Hon Hubert A Ingraham MP, Prime Minister of The Bahamas

 

 

 

 

 

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 The Rt Hon Hubert Alexander Ingraham became the fourth Prime Minister of The Bahamas and Minister of Finance in 2007 following that year’s general election. PM Ingraham previously served as Prime Minister in August 1992. Hubert Ingraham was born in Grand Bahama and grew up in Abaco. Following brief periods of employment in the accounting departments of Owens-Illinois Sugar Mill Company in Abaco, the Bahamas Telecommunications Corporation and the Chase Manhattan Bank in Nassau, he became an articled law clerk and was called to the Bahamas Bar in 1972 after which he entered private practice. An active member and officer in the Nassau and Bahamas Jaycees, he entered front-line politics in 1975 when he was elected to the National General Council of the PLP and became party chairman in 1976. He was first elected to parliament in 1977 and served as a member of the House Standing Committee on Privilege and Public Accounts, as chairman of a Select Committee on Influence Peddling and Political Contributions and as chairman of the Bahamas Mortgage Corporation. He has also served as a member of the Air Transport Licensing Authority and chairman of the Real Property Tax Tribunal. In 1982, he was appointed Minister for Housing and National Insurance, a post he held for two years but following his public criticism of the then government’s inaction after revelations of corruption by the 1984 Commission of Inquiry, he was dismissed from the Cabinet and, in 1986, expelled from the PLP. His strong personal following permitted him to continue to call for radical changes in the political culture of patronage and nepotism and he was re-elected to parliament as an Independent in 1987. He then joined the then official opposition party, the Free National Movement (FNM) in 1990  and was elected leader of the party and Leader of the Official Opposition later that year. He imprinted his style on the FNM and made his belief in and calls for honest, open transparent and accountable government, a fundamental tenet of his new party pulling off a victory in a by-election in Grand Bahama in 1990. From a working-class family, PM Ingraham has a strong social conscience which influenced the policies of his party and government. His first term in government saw a deliberate reduction in the size of government, reducing government’s direct intervention in the economy and promoting fresh private investment, both domestic and international.

 

 Hon Bruce Golding, Prime Minister of Jamaica (CLGF patron)

 

 

 

 

 

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Prime Minister Golding’s developed a keen interest in politics when, as a boy, he accompanied his father - the first Speaker of the House in independent Jamaica -  to many political events. His first political appointment was to the Board of the National Lotteries Commission in 1968, and in the same year he was elected vice chair of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) for West St Catherine and then in 1969 won the parliamentary seat for the constituency. He was elected General Secretary of the party in 1974 and later appointed to the Senate and was a key person in the JLP’s successful 1980 election campaign. After this election he was reappoined to the Senate as Minister for Construction . Mr Golding returned to parliament when he was elected as an MP in 1983. As chair of the JLP from 1984 he served as acting Prime Minister on a number of occasions. In opposition from 1989, he was Shadow Finance Minister and chair of the Public Accounts Committee, exposing a number of public scandals. However, dissatisfied with the country’s non-progressive political culture in the 1990s, he campaigned for change but while he had public support, he did not get the support of the JLP and created a new party, the National Democratic Movement of which he became the first president. After failing to get electoral representation in the 1997 and 2001 elections, he rejoined the JLP under a memorandum of understanding to re-examine the issue of separate powers, eliminate political tribalism, establish a public prosecutor, have oversight committees chaired by the opposition and re-examine term limits. He was appointed Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2005, and became chairman of the party. The same year he was elected again as an MP and became leader of the opposition. Two years later he led the JLP to victory in the 2007 elections and became Jamaica’s eighth Prime Minister.  Mr Golding graduated from the University of the West Indies with a BSc in economics.

 

 

Leonard B Bihondo, Chairman, Association of Local Authorities of Tanzania
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Leonard Bihondo was elected to Mwanza City Council in 1994 and has been mayor since 2000. He has been chair of the East African Local Government Association and became chair of the Association of Local Authroities of Tanzania (ALAT) in 2006. He is also chair of the Lake Victoria Regional Local Authorities Cooperation.
He has worked for the National Electricity Utility for 20 years and is amember of the CLGF board.

 
 
 
  
  
HE Edwin Wilberforce Carrington, Secretary-General, CARICOM                              
Edwin Carrington, a national of Trinidad and Tobago, is the Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community and of the Caribbean Forum of ACP States - CARIFORUM. He has held that position since August 1992, making him the longest serving Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community.  He has a distinguished career in diplomacy, development and regionalism including as Deputy Secretary-General (1976-1985), and from 1985-1990, as Secretary-General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) In acknowledgement of his outstanding service, Carrington Hall at the ACP Secretariat (Brussels) is named in his honour.  From 1991 Mr Carrington served as his country’s High Commissioner to Guyana before becoming Secretary-General of CARICOM.
An economist, Mr Carrington has been honoured with many awards including  the Trinity Cross, his country’s highest honour and many honours from other Caribbean countries.  Secretary-General Carrington is the holder of Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Economics, from the Universities of the West Indies and McGill University in Canada. He was also conferred with the degree of Honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of the West Indies and the City University of New York.

  
Hon Joseph Yieleh Chireh, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Ghana
Hon Joseph Chireh was elected to parliament in 2005 and from 2006 served on a number of government committees. From 1993-97 Hon Joseph Chireh was a regional minister in Upper Wesst and then served as Ambassador in Algeria for four years.He became Minister for Local Governemnt in 2009 and is a member of the CLGF Board. He is a pharmacist by profession and a lawyer.




  
 Winston Cox, Executive Director, Inter-American Bank
Winston Cox joined the Inter-American Development Bank on 1 July 2006 as Alternate Executive Director for the Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. After completing an assignment with the International Monetary Fund on the impact of the publication of IMF staff reports on the economies of Fund members, he joined the Commonwealth Secretariat  where he served for six years as Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, responsible for Development Co-operation. Mr Cox served as Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados from 1997 to 1999 and, prior to that, held positions as an Alternate Executive Director in the World Bank and Director of Finance and Economic Affairs in the Barbados Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs.
 
Cllr Margaret Eaton OBE, Chairperson, Local Government Association of England and Wales 
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Margaret Eaton was elected Chairman of the Local Government Association in September 2008. She has over 20 years experience in local government, having served on Bradford Metropolitan District Council, the fourth largest Metropolitan District Council in England, since May 1986. Margaret began her career in politics when she joined the Conservative Party in 1970.  Following election as a councillor in 1986, she became leader of the Conservative Group on Bradford Council in May 1995 and in May 2000 became the first female leader of Bradford Council, a role she held for six years.  As a regional leader Margaret has been a key member of the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly and a member of the Association of West Yorkshire Authorities for several years.
 
 
Lord Hanningfield, Leader, Essex County Council and Local Government Association of England and Wales
Lord Hanningfield has been an Essex County Councillor for over thirty years and has led the Council for most of the last ten. He was Chairman of the Council 1989-92. Education has featured strongly as an area of expertise during his career as has local government at the national level. He played a key role in establishing the Local Government Association, becoming Vice-Chairman on its inception. He has also held various senior posts on the EU Committee of the Regions during the last decade, being particularly involved in forging links between local government in the EU and the accession countries. He was ennobled in 1998 and in 2003 became an opposition whip in the House of Lords and Front Bench spokesperson on Local Government. He has also served as a Shadow Minister for Education. He is currently Shadow Minister for Transport in the House of Lords.
  
Cllr Geoff Lake, President, Australian Local Government Association
Geoff lake has played a prominent role in government at the local, state and national levels.
He was first elected as a Councillor in the City of Monash in March 2000.  Monash is one of Melbourne's biggest municipalities with 167,000 residents. At the age of 22 Geoff became the youngest ever Mayor in Victoria.  After completing two terms as Mayor, Geoff was elected President of the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV). He held this role for two years until August 2006 when he resigned to complete his articles at Minter Ellison and become a lawyer. Geoff rejoined the boards of the MAV and the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) in October 2008 and was elected President of ALGA in November 2008. Among his duties as President of ALGA, Geoff represents the 562 councils across Australia at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) alongside the Prime Minister and state and territory leaders.
 
Hon Hazel Manning, Minister of Local Government, Trinidad and Tobago
Senator, the Hon Hazel Manning joined the Cabinet of Trinidad and Tobago in 2001 when she was appointed Minister of Education. In 2007 she was reappointed to the Senate following the General Elections of that year and became the country's first female Minister of Local Government. Her professional career included serving as  Head of Research for the Ministry of Planning and Development, Town and Country Planning; Manager of Social Affairs Unit for the National Housing Authority;   Business Development Manager for the Airports Authority;   International Specialist Consultant in Social Impact Assessment. Senator the Honourable Hazel Manning comes to Local Government with a record of accomplishments as follows: Minister Manning has a considerable track record in education and social work, including transfoming the structure of education, modern social assesment techniques, curriculum development, education and early childhood policy, and assessment and certification of labour competitiveness at upper secondary level. She is President of the Organisation of American States Inter-American Mininsterial Committee on Education, and First Vice-President of the Board of the Inter-Governmental Committee on Education for Latin America and the Caribbean. The UWI-educated Senator Hon Hazel Manning completed a BSc in Social Sciences in 1972 and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Public Administration in 1987. In 2000 to 2001, she pursued an MSc in Planning and Development.
 
 
Mayor Amos Masondo,Mayor of the City of Johannesburg and President of the South African Local Government Association
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Amos Mosando is the current mayor of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a member of the African National Congress, and is the first elected mayor of the Unified City of Johannesburg. Born and educated in Soweto, Mosando was a participant in the anti-Afrikaans riots in 1972. He also established underground cells in Soweto, and was imprisoned on Robben Island from 1975 to 1981 for his participation in anti-apartheid activities. After he was released, he served as a member of the Soweto Civic Association, and was again detained under the emergency regulations from June 1985 to March 1986, and again from July 1986 to 1989. He was also elected as a member of the Gauteng Legislature, and was subsequently elected to serve as Mayor of Johannesburg in 2001.
 
 
Hon Fiame Naomi Mataafa MP, Minister for Women, Community and Social Development, Samoa
Hon Fiame Mataafa was elected as an MP in 1985 as a member of the Human Rights Protection Party. She has been a cabinet minister since 1991, and has held the education, youth, sports and culture, and labour portfolios. After the 2006 election, she was appointed Minister for Women, Community and Social Development. Naomi was conferred the title of Fiame, a chiefly title of the Lotofaga district, in 1977. Internationally, she has represented Samoa and the Pacific Islands on the Executive Board of UNESCO and the Commonwealth of Learning. A keen advocate of women’s development, she has strong ties with the National Council of Women and the Inailau Women’s Leadership Network.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Hon Robert Montague, Minister of State for Local Government, Jamaica
The Hon. Robert Montague is well known in local government through his dynamism and vocal expressions as former Mayor of Port Maria and Chairman of the St. Mary Parish Council, 2003 and as chairperson of CLGF from 2006 until he was elected to parliament in 2007.

 
 
 
 
Mayor Zenaida Moya, Belize City Council (CLGF Vice Chairperson)
Zenaida Moya began her career at the Social Security Board in 1995, moving to the Ministry of Economic Development in 1997 as an economist and then senior economist. There she coordinated strategies on national development planning and a wide variety of programmes in education, environment, health and sustainable development. In 2002 she became Registrar of Cooperatives and Credit Unions and headed the Department of Cooperatives and Credit Unions. She left public service in 2005 when she became mayoral candidate for the United Democratic Party and, after winning the municipal elections in 2006, became Belize City’s first female mayor. Since then she has been President of the Belize Mayor’s Association, Vice-President of the Caribbean Association of Local Government Authorities, and a member of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Advisory Group. She was vice-chairperson of CLGF during the conference and elected as Chair at the CLGF General Meeting on 14 May 2009..
  
Basil Morrison, CLGF Chairperson
A dairy farmer by trade, Basil Morrison was elected to the Ohinemuri County in January 1971 at the age of 24 and served there until 1989 when it amalgamated with other local bodies to form the Hauraki District in 1989. There he was County Chairman for six years and became elected Mayor of the newly formed Hauraki District. He now represents the Hauraki constituency on Environment Waikato, the regional council for the Waikato region.  Basil has wide involvement in local government and community organisations. He has a keen interest in business and economic development, being a former Deputy Chairman of the Thames Valley-Coromandel Business Development Board and Chairman of the New Zealand Counties Investment Company for a number of years. He was elected President of Local Government New Zealand in November 2000 when he became a Board member of CLGF. He stood down from Local Government New Zealand in 2008 after retiring from his council position. He became chairperson of CLGF in November 2007.


  
David Morrison, Executive Secretary, United Nations Capital Development Fund
 
David Morrison began his career with the UNDP as a Junior Professional Officer in North Korea in the late 1980s.  He returned to UNDP in 1999-2000 as an Advisor on Strategy and Partnerships and served on the incoming Administrator’s Transition Team.  From 2000-2004 he was President of NetAid, a partnership initiative founded by UNDP and Cisco Systems to use the internet to fight poverty.  He took up his current post as Executive Secretary at the UNCDF in July 2008.
 

The Commonwealth Local Government Conference 2009 took place in Freeport, Grand Bahama from 11-14 May 2009.

Opening ceremony

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Conference statement

Freeport declaration: on improving local government: the Commonwealth vision
© 2012 Commonwealth Local Government Forum
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