One of the concepts driving modern governments’ activities is the practice and adherence to the principles of good governance.
Earlier this year I briefly discussed two of the principles of good governance been accountability and transparency. This week I wish to look at four other principles under two main basic themes of legitimacy and voice which will embrace the principles of participation and consensus orientation, and fairness which cover the principles of equity and rule of law. These principles of good governance are discussed within the context of known actors that are and provide the framework within which good governance is practiced in different countries. Amongst these actors are the governments, civil society, private sector, media, military, political parties and many other entities that may be outside the mentioned organs.
The general context is that good governance is ordinarily a function of the relationship and patterns of such a relationship between these actors and more importantly the amount of power, influence and resources possessed by each of these actors.
Although I have mentioned government as a unit, it should be understood that government can be disaggregated to include small units of civil service, elected officials and ad-hoc type actors. Each of these actors, often bring different perspectives to the interpretation and details of what good governance should entail in a given country. It is from these diverse interpretations that we could locate the perspective of the public service (real or perceived).
The first theme of legitimacy and voice cover two main principles which have since been part of the United Nations Development Programmes’ outreach message on the expected meaning of these principles and good governance in general. One such principle is participation whose thrust is that in any country, citizens must directly be part of the decision making processes or at the very least they should indirectly participate through legitimate intermediate organs that are representative of society’s intentions. This assumes and expects governments to create space for citizens’ engagement and often this becomes one of the public services’ greatest challenges because of the difficulty in defining each actor’s role and desired input. This also is largely dependent on the power distribution and nature of relationship and patterns of behaviour amongst these actors.
This participation also assumes that a solid foundation exists that provides freedom of association and speech for citizens to freely exercise such a right and associated privileges. There is talk of the possibility of limiting the number of people allowed to gather at any given occasion here in Botswana and it would be interesting to see how this new bye law fits in to this good governance principle ( that however is a subject for some other discussion). A key assumption of citizen engagement, participation and freedom of association is that citizens have been empowered to participate constructively. The role of empowering citizens beyond the legal requirements becomes a detail to be drafted and perfected by the public service. The public service will and ought to provide a sensible meaning of the processes necessary to equip citizens with understanding and the logic of what engagement means and the relevance of such in the overall governance systems of a nation.
Inbuilt on the above is the challenge to strife for sufficient broad consensus arrived at through careful and diligent mediation of what is naturally differing interests that may point to diverse emphasis on the meaning and details of good governance. The public service becomes a fountain of knowledge and expertise on how to effectively mediate and limit escalation of differences and potential outbursts of these conflicting interests, which may jeopardise good governance practices at a general level. This suggests that amongst the various actors, public servants are centrally located to define and ensure the required processes and dynamics that are necessary to ‘smoothen’ the relationships and partnerships between and amongst all other actors.
The second theme of fairness embodies the principles of equity and the rule of law as key tenants of good governance practices.
Equity ensures that as nations we should embrace and accept the principle that all citizens are born free and equal in dignity and rights and as a result we have opportunities to improve our lives and maintain acceptable levels of wellbeing. That these opportunities are deemed to exist is not enough to guarantee citizens access to such, it is the public servant who must transform and translate the existence of such opportunities into reality for the citizens. The processes of how, when and the details of what citizens can in reality and practically access is the purview of the expert public servant to unravel. It is at this level of public service role to effect these expectations that we can now measure how effective and functional are our purposive programmes for the attainment of equity as a key good governance practice.
Fairness is further defined through the meaning and interpretation of our legal provisions and related instruments and the extent to which these are enforced impartially, including laws on human rights. Our ability as a nation to fulfil the legal requirements of good governance practices, is as well a matter of the detailed assessment of the sentences and decisions of the courts of law or the judicial system in general and the extent to which citizens can and do trust that decisions of these learned cadre are guided by impartiality, integrity and pursuit of justice. The integrity of the judicial system in this regard, for me, remains the public service’s domain, even in the possible wake of other powers in government having potential to influence and abuse the judicial system. The experts must at all-time come out triumphs; the public service must provide and define the limits and parameters of the practice of good governance in this country. I have too much trust on the potential of the expert public servant, only that I see it as too detached and playing the observer and sometimes subservient role. Good governance requirements need the expert to come to the party.
