The nation is still grappling with the merits and demerits of the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP), especially its implications as a politically driven public sector programme that would have hitherto been a normal bureaucratic initiative, planned and budget by the normal budgetary processes under the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP). Whilst questions are still asked on the ESPs, another initiative has emerged that also has a lot of questions around the mandate, responsibilities, power and authority of MFDP, as has historically been practiced in our public service. The new kid on the block is the Presidential Inspectorate created to coordinate government projects. This structure has a very visible political focus as the membership points out in the form of former cabinet ministers and bureaucrats. On the face of it may lead one to argue that it has the balance between politicians and bureaucrats based on the equal numbers of its composition, but the question would then be was that the intention behind the equal numbers or those are just coincidental parities?
What I wish to discuss in respect of the above is what I deem to be a visible decline in the authority and power of MFDP in the processes of planning, budgeting, managing and controlling of government initiatives intended to address the country’s development agenda. Historically, it was a known and practiced culture in the public service that MFDP sets the framework for the development agenda, makes necessary assessment (estimates & forecasts) of envisaged policy initiatives including a thorough analysis of the efficacy or otherwise of such initiatives. MFDP and the bureaucracy in general operated under an established culture of a bureaucratic dominated public policy making and analysis practice. It was under the practice of this culture that any government policies, programmes and projects not sanctioned by MFDP would not be part of the National Development Planning and Budgetary processes. In this scenario, political interventions mainly came on board through presentation of draft policies, programmes and projects to cabinet by the bureaucracy and all the justifications were then based on professional/expert rationality as exercised by groups and individuals of public servants trained, by government, in the various fields inputting into the policy processes.
This had a very clear mandate and defined authority of MFDP and any legislatively delegated authority to this central ministry on matters pertaining to planning, finance, budgeting, management and control of the countries natural, human and financial resources for the development of the country. All these were known and understood to be the culture of the country’s public administration practices, where government had taken a deliberate decision to allow the bureaucracy to dominate the country’s management of resources for developmental purposes. In other words my reading of this is that the dominance of MFDP on matters of planning, budgeting and associated processes was not an accident, but was very deliberate based on certain old adages on politically driven policies. Political scientists have coined one such adage to say “Good Politics, Bad Policy” under the argument that politically driven public policies often results in the distortion of government intentions as it dilutes rationality and objectivity in policy analysis.
It is also known to delay proactivity and promotes reactionary responses to developmental challenges often at very high cost to public funds simply because it has a tendency to hide the real costs of reactive policies and programmes. Lastly, political driven policies are historically known to open avenues for acceleration and promotion of special interests at the expense of public interests, simply because of the inclinations of patronage and partisan appointments into organs of government. The conventional arguments against politicised public policies and partisan appointments to public service offices is that; Globally, politically driven policy initiatives are susceptible to emotion-driven policies usually crafted behind emotive stances of fear, panic and anger. These are known to be very powerful human emotions that blind political leaders to the often necessary cold calculations of fact, logic and strategic considerations guided by objectivity and rational decision making on policy matters.
The old public administration practices with MFDP assuming the control role within government was largely based on the need for meritocracy in public policy analysis and making. This required that public policy choices and any structural adjustments to organs of government should be based on the need to define public policies’ direction which is guided by expertise’s analytical assessment anchored on objective evidence and objectivity. My assessment of the effects of the ESP and the New Inspectorate is that they will redefine the authority of MFDP and invariably act to reduce the hitherto influence and control exercised by MFDP. These may ultimately conjure to complicate clarity of authority and accountability as I want to assume that both MFDP and line ministries still have responsibilities and roles to play in coordinate programmes and projects under their respective ministries. Is there clarity on how this particular role will be redefined to reduce overlaps between ministerial units coordinating projects and the new inspectorate?
Lastly, both ESP and the new Inspectorate have implications on the capacity of both MFDP and line ministries to effectively undertake policy definitions and clarity as well as coordination of their operational activities. Could it be that we now want to bring the political colour to planning, budgeting and coordination of government programmes and projects? If so how do we now configure the capacity of state organs to effectively act proactively on these matters and how does that configuration balance or reconcile the allocation of authority between MFDP, Line ministries and the new initiatives such as the Inspectorate, without costly overlaps that can easily overstretch government resources and compromise efficiency. These are some of the questions we still have to sift through these new kids on the block and deduce answers for, a process that can get murky and not so fulfilling.
*Dan Molaodi teaches Public Administration at the University of Botswana
