The changing landscape in government’s approach to service delivery and general government-citizen relational patterns in modern day may demand that we have a relook at the role and place of our public institutions. I wish to briefly discuss that aspect with focus on the centrality and importance of public institutions in nurturing and sustaining democratic governance through citizen confidence in these institutions. This discussion will look at two categories of public institutions; institutions of representative governance mainly been the legislature and the political side of the executive and institutions that are mainly government’s implementing machinery, i.e. the bureaucratic side of the executive and legislature and the judiciary. This discussion is premised on an assumption that any dissatisfaction with, and lack of confidence on the functioning and integrity of institutions of governance by the public, is a long term danger to democratic practices and good governance.
A cursory look at our institutions of representative government, been parliament and the local governments suggests that there is need to realign them to current demands and expectations of citizens in how these institutions actualize our representative democracy. There has been calls for a reform of parliament to give it more powers and authority relative to those possessed by the executive. This is partly because in representative democracies, the chosen representatives must be seen to have the kind of powers that will not only facilitate their functional responsibilities but more importantly to do so on the basis of entrusted and delegated citizen/public will. The electoral vote in this context confers certain innate powers of the elected such that they act and decide matters on behalf of the electorate. This then implies a central virtue of citizen supremacy that must be visible in the manner and ways in which elected officials act and discharge their responsibilities.
The above in our situations calls for two main arguments; firstly that on the basis of our electoral system, the executive, in particular the presidency cannot be seen to possess too much power over the legislature because it then defeats principles of both a parliamentary democracy and representative democracy. Any separation of powers then must always protect the virtue of these two principles, individually and collectively. The lack of this protection could in the long term lead to dissatisfaction with the role and integrity of these institutions of representative government. The result of such loss of public confidence will mean the decline in trust on political leaders as individuals and as a collective. An argument is often made that loss of confidence and trust in the integrity of the political leadership can be mitigated against by two main scenarios. Firstly, that in a vibrant and functioning democracy, politicians come and go through the electoral process and that gives citizens a chance to bring on board individuals who could retain and respect their role as representative democratic leaders and secondly, in a true democratic and good governance system, the existence of a merit based bureaucracy would normalize and neutralize what would otherwise be a disastrous unfolding affronting democratic principles.
The first is in two folds, in situations where citizens choose to retain the same political leadership in the form of similar party, then they are presumed to have the power to replace, align and where necessary gag individuals by putting in place those that are deemed to possess the right qualities, character and resolve to uphold the principles of parliamentary and representative democracy. They could also choose to remove a party as a collective to give the reins of power to another political power that resonates well with the intentions and practices of modern democratic ideals based on those principles.
The second key escape route brings us to the place and role of appointed public servants in entrenching and protecting the ideals of representative and parliamentary democracies. The argument here is that if the political institutions of good governance fail citizens, a merit based, neutral and apolitical public service becomes the only citizens’ hope for restoration and protection of basic principles of representative and parliamentary democracy. This role is only possible if the appointed officials are truly non-partisan and exercise their professional rationality to actualize and protect the citizen interest. The dissatisfaction with and lack of confidence on the political institutions could then be somewhat mitigated by trust and entrenched integrity of the implementing institutions of government. This means that it’s disastrous if there is no distinctive difference on how the citizens view both of these institutions because then the loos of confidence on the political side invariably translates into the loss of such on the bureaucracy as well. When such is the case citizens often find no exit hole from the suffocation of not only their democratic practices but more importantly they lose confidence, trust and responsibility to governance.
The above creates a vacuum that historically has been filled by spontaneous reactions in the form of general public revolts, uprisings, civil unrest and various other ways, some of which could be destructive as citizens try to figure out how to regain their cherished values of representative governance. It may for now appear to be a situation that some would argue as very unlikely in our democratic dispensation, but I want to argue that over the last ten or more years, there has been reports of cases in both our political and bureaucratic leadership that suggests that the operations by those in these positions are not always virtuous to key principles of democracy and good governance. There are instances where individual political leaders act in manners that defies their representative roles and in other situations the collective at both national and local level suggests short-changing of citizen expectations. The role and place of the experts/professionals in the country’s policy making process seem to have shifted to a point where their expertise is often of no value and use and this is a key departure from the past role of bureaucrats in so far as their role to protect the public interest is concerned. This role is expected to, where necessary, go against what may be political expediency and patronage and this is very central in instilling confidence and trust among citizens on their public institutions. We may not be there yet but let’s keep our eyes open.
*Dan Molaodi teaches Public Administration at the University of Botswana
