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If there’s one lesson the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it is that local government plays a vital role in people’s lives – and elected local politicians are better placed to make decisions that affect the communities they serve than distant apparatuses with little understanding of local circumstances.

Local leaders have repeatedly shown they’re willing to take a stand for democratic municipalism and have demanded new fiscal arrangements and more power to ‘build back better’. However, to transform this slogan into reality, the centre needs to change its position radically, re-investing local government with lost resources, powers and trust rather than spectating, or even planning, its demise.

Photo: Joshua Coleman