Our Long Journey of Liberation and Hope for Good Governance in South Sudan (Part 2)
14 min readThis article is dedicated to millions of Martyrs of May 16 Day
By Manon Jok Aleu, New York, USA
June 4, 2015 (SSB) — Development Concept of Good Government: The concept of good governance is primarily based in state institutions or constitutional building for a viable economic, social and political development. Most importantly, for the government to deliver services to the people effectively, it should mainly focus on transparency, efficient delivery of services, and accountability just to name a few.
There would be nothing called good governance without proper modern institutions or structures which would shape collective voices. (This paradigm shares many assumptions with modern institutionalism, which sees institutions not as static and unchanging structures, but rather shaped by the preferences voiced in collective capacities.)
Furthermore, good governance should be seen as a way through which institutions of governance enable individuals to collectively secure their own roles as participants in decision making in order to protect their rights and privacy. Good governance should not be defined simply as objectives that cannot be efficiently secured through simple market exchange or democratic voting alone although the both increase accountability.
According to Williamson’s definition, governance is “…a combined form of choice and contract” and this means human behaviors are motivated by maximizing their needs and satisfying needs along a continuum from “good enough” to “great”. The celebration of independence of our new Republic on July 9, 2011 was the first step of many steps to follow. These steps included nation building projects beginning with a permanent constitution, peace building activities as well as delivery of services which were the next steps people were awaiting and which the movement had for many years promised the people during their revolutionary struggles.
The Sudan People’s liberation (SPLM) had promised to build schools, roads, and health centers, and provide safe water systems, social welfare and many more services. Foremost, our government officials as the main actors should have focused from the very beginning on these actions I have just mentioned. These issues should have been the basis for enacting good governance allowed for by the constitutional mandate.
Any interpretation of rules and practices socially constructed by our society and identities and rules that were the result of our social interaction and experience to define ourselves as one people and one nation should have been dealt with by a legislative process.
The government of South Sudan as a main actor should have recognized that it has contracts with people of South Sudan and it should ensure trust and respect by delivering its promises through solving problems facing the nation. For instance, it should have established the right institutions that are obligated to deliver what they promised to the people who elected them into offices in the 2010 elections.
Not every challenge or problem, or conflict in collective action requires a third party intervention. We recognize that only with trustworthy leaders, people will survive in an evolutionary continuum and be able to survive unexpected changes through cooperative behaviors, managed by leaders such as Gandhi, Mandela, John Garang and Martin Luther King. I believe the South Sudanese people are capable of defining good governance on their own.
Studies have shown that social norms can work in generating cooperative behaviors and can forge better set of rules. Through cooperation, a nation is likely to survive longer than that of externally imposed norms. The best practice of our own paradigm is our long journeys for struggle searching for good governance in over 50 years. We must recognize the importance of the rules that have to be constituted and enacted by power of our people, and that the agent of enactment of good governance shall be the people of the nation.
The government or elites or organizations that respect internal rules, i.e. agents of “People Power”, are more likely to be respected, observed and complied with by citizens. Therefore, our institutions shall perform signaling functions providing information and incentives to help actors define their strategies within the limits of a cooperative relationship.
Many studies suggests that governance structures that are institutionalized infuse order in transactions to mitigate conflict and realize mutual gain. John Elster has made a good point when he writes that a “good governance concept, however, persuasion means the appeal to norms, principles, and values that are shared by participants in a fairness conversation between people and government they elected to represent them.
Persuasion requires giving moral reasons for actions, reasons that go beyond assertion about power, interests, and resolve.” If political decisions are ultimately moral choices, and talking of principles implies an ethical dimension then our country should not been in the situation we are in today ie “The State of War of Choices”.
Furthermore, the guiding principles of our liberation requires and obligate us to form a government that is based on legal order and legal principles, as socially embedded institutions, that emphasize good governance in the formation of our communities’ moral values into any considerations of nation building of the new Republic of South Sudan. Ronald Dworkins makes a good point in his article “A Matter of Principle” in which he discusses the process of taking into consideration the community values of people and allowing a community’s morality to be built by state suggesting that it must be neutral or independent of any particular conception of good life and must support diversity and complexity.
The People of South Sudan have dreamed for a state that shall not support policies on non- neutral grounds, providing that other citizens be favors or against the state, we need the state to treat its own people with respect, no less valuable than other citizens. That is a good governance culture we wanted in the new nation. Our government should have built a framework for administration and principles of governance that implied “Values of Governance”. These principles of law consist of a universally accepted typical mixture: fairness, legality, consistency, rationality and impartiality and are the values of governance of principles.
In addition to government using these principles of good governance, collective action and citizens’ rights are required in order for them to participate in policy making as well as decision making. Therefore, participation, transparency, (openness and access to information to public citizens), accountability and reasonableness become the values of good governance. According to Carol Harlow, in “Global Administrative Law” good governance is an attempt to close the gap between policy development and implementation, democracy and efficiency and the rule of law (Constitutions), and between those who are governing and those are being governed ( the people).
Good governance refers to the process that brings and collates different interests and resources together in a functioning order to produce and achieve collective good at global and national levels. These good values, (goals), are shaped by political, economic and social values from which a particular form of governance derives its legitimacy by discovering and enforcing overarching values. These overreaching values are not the properties of the state, but of the society as well. A good governance ideal government shall not just focus on or place too much dependence on laws and rules alone.
That alone cannot result in a good system of governance. Therefore, more emphasis is put on procedures like dialogue, discussions, participation and democracy to increase the legitimacy of governance structures and laws. According to Mark Bevir’s Democratic Governance, is the systems governance that requires a consultation and an active dialogue. That is the type governance culture that we should have adopted in our own Republic of South Sudan in July 9, 2011.
Good governance may recall itself to us through its outcomes, functions and procedures. Good governance delivers outcomes which increase the set of human capability, human capacity or human empowerment or freedom to achieve productive purposes, in a just way which benefits the least advantaged ones by making at least no one worse off and provides basic needs for all living in the state. Therefore, good governance, and most functions of governance, as being proposed by the advocates of a good governance concept, should be performed at the market and community level and less influenced by higher level of authority in the state.
Therefore, the South Sudan government should develop or build the institutions that are designed for governance that should be culturally and politically diverse so that most of the functions can be performed at local levels, where citizens have the upper hand in decision making.
Our government system should be able to limit the opportunities to externalize the cost of actions from one locality onto others. Government institutions are to provide a focal point like in a collaboration game situation, where no one has an incentive to defect (checks and balances). Also needed are procedural criteria which are accountability of elites for their actions, participation of people in making collectively binding decisions, and are persuasive so that people abide by the rules rather than depending on uses of forces.
These procedural criteria are essential for voluntary cooperation based on communication, rational –moral persuasion, and legitimate process, elements we missed in dealing with our internal challenges, such as cattle raiding or tribal conflict in the country. Instead we have emphasized the use of force rather than persuasion, dialogue and communication with these local communities thus leading to violence since 2005.
Good Governance in the International Institution Arena
Good governance, in the mind of people mean democratic governance, in which attributes importance to people’s consensus, dialogue, compromise, participation, accountability, transparency, efficiency, openness and communication within a complex network of actors and institutions (agents). Elections alone cannot be considered or claimed as the only tools in addressing issues of people governance. South Sudan, as an emerging state from over 50 years of wars with highly illiterate communities and diverse ethnicities, requires more than majority elections to determine the nation’s fitness in moving forward in forming good governance.
The new republic requires a form of governance that advocates for the dispersion of decision-making and implementation from decentralization of the state and inclusiveness in serving interests of the nations across actors as diverse as possible. For example, our major decisions must be made through processes of bargaining and negotiations amongst stakeholders of the nation, national government, local government, business people and civil society actors in semi formalized institutions.
What the international institution advocates say about good governance are a useful platform that could help our people in searching for good governance in the land of Eden. Consequently the World Bank since 1989 has promoted that idea that “democratization in the context of a free economy would compel governments to be more accountable, less corrupt and hence more efficient developmentally.”
Thus, participation, accountability, and transparency formed the harmony of good governance values. The most important overall idea mentioned above in making our good governance more effective is that we must emphasize multiplicity and pluralism of our system of governance. I believe that the norms and principles of governance should be able to operate in different value system in a way to facilitate democracy in the new nation.
The World Bank defined “good governance” as the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised for the common good, this including (1) the process by which those in authority are selected, monitored and replaced, (2) the capacity of the government to effectively manage its resources and implement sound policies, and (3) the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interaction among them.
This means that our governance system in the country shall be measured by looking at how our authorities, the representatives in three branches of governance (executive, legislative and judiciary) are being selected, whether they are accountable to the citizenry, whether they produce sound policies and have the capacity to implement them, and whether they are capable of managing our own resources effectively.
Moreover, the World Bank has embraced and advocated decentralization of government as one of the major governance reforms system in developing countries; the Republic of South Sudan has adopted the decentralization of governance since 2005, if that is the case, then the aim of decentralization governance is to reduce the role of central government in controlling local government at the state and county levels, by replacing it with less central government control over state and local government in relation to the broad economy, local market, culture and basic education, tax regime, etc., in addition to providing checks and balances in the political process and increasing the responsiveness and efficiency of governments; defusing social and political tensions; and ensuring local cultural autonomy, political autonomy, etc.
Good governance according to the definition of the United Nations Development Program, (UNDP policy documented in 1994), has nine characteristics. These characteristics are strategic, participatory, consensus oriented (inclusive), accountable, transparent, responsive, effective/efficient, and equitable decision making and implementation which follows the rule of laws. In that regard, our government has done little of the above mentioned.
For example, participation means that all men and women have a voice in decision – making, or all men and women are created equally in the free republic of South Sudan, either directly or through legitimate intermediate institutions that represent their interests. We must give ourselves credit as a nation that within the SPLM party women’s representation stands at 25%, but that representation has changed little overall in our women’s living conditions and equal rights in participation in social and political settings. For a truly participatory and equitable environment all citizens need to be more informed and organized to accept change.
Although our women at the grass-root level have never realized nor felt the benefits of the 25% representation in the country, a few elite women have benefited, as the vast majority of women in the countryside have been left outside the possibility of rising expectations. The far flung villages across the country are facing poverty, caring for the martyrs’ children with no proper support or participation in the social and political development of the nation. This means that the freedom of association and expression and on the other hand, civil society have been missing.
Such as broad participation should have built on freedom of association and free speech as well as capacity building tools to help our citizens to participate constructively. The rule of law means that legal frameworks should be fair and enforced impartially, particularly the laws on human rights. For example, since 2005 the unending intertribal fighting in some parts of the count is the result of the absence of proper law and order in the country due to our broken police and court systems. So as a result, people take the law into their own hands, as we have witness in such incidents in Lake State and other states in the country.
Transparency is built on the free flow of information. Processes, institutions and information should be accessible to concerned citizens, and enough information should be provided so that citizens understand and monitor those authorities. For example, we have the case of the unknown 75 corrupt officials and how citizens have yet to learn their identity. This is a profound example of how our system of governance avoided public accessibility to public information.
Responsiveness means that institutions and processes within system of governance try to serve all stakeholders. That means the level of services delivered to the people, such as involvement and participation of the public and right to know, and how these developmental projects are planned and implemented in areas such as education, health, transportation, safe water, etc. For example, Constituency Development Fund projects are not being made clear to the citizens. Who is really controlling and planning these projects to be implemented? Is it an individual representative in the national legislature or from a local community.
It is for us as an emerging nation to adopt consensus orientation from our public citizens that could help the mediation between differing interests in order to reach a broad consensus on what is in the best interest of the group, citizens and where possible on policies and procedures being agreed upon. For example, the current country crisis known as the December15, 2013 Crisis is the best example of how our government has failed to reach a broad consensus in addressing issues concerning the nation.
Equity means that all men and women have opportunities to improve or maintain their well-being. Not enough is being done in addressing public participation in decision making; we have conducted referendums but refused to apply solutions to other essential nation building issues. Effectiveness and efficiency assures that the processes and institutions produce results that meet the public needs, while making the best use of resources for the benefit of the nation. We have seen little being done since 2005, when it comes to services delivered effectively or responsiveness to the citizens priorities.
These services include but are not limited to security, food, road construction, etc. Accountability is a property of decision –makers in government, the private sector and civil society organizations who are accountable to the public for what they do and have done, as well as to institutional stakeholders. Very little has been done or implemented, and to this day we have never seen a case of a corrupt official being brought to trial, and no single corrupt individual being jailed in the whole of the country.
Overall, our long journey toward liberation and hope for good governance, for the people of South Sudan, shall continue as a priority among the goals of the nation. Nevertheless, good governance is a process to establish fair rules of behaviors (building the right institutions) in a given context. The good governance concept includes dialogue, compromise and communication; our country should adopt the above mentioned elements in building a just and peaceful nation. Indeed, it is not enough to have communication (people participation in the political sphere alone) between the public (people) and its agents for democracy (civil society groups) and government.
The people should also have the right to control whether the decisions and the actions of their agents comply with the law. A good governance paradigm urges the development of public policies and institutions that enhance socially beneficial, cooperative behavior based mostly on societal norms. Furthermore, policy initiatives are to be designed for facilitating collective action aimed at the formation of social norms that might enhance cooperative behavior in accordance to local norms (locality of government).
I dedicate this article to over two million South Sudanese lives lost, their sacrifices in pursuing a just freedom of their own, our guiding principles of our revolutionary “equality, justice and prosperity” shall never be forgotten until our long journey of liberation and hope for good governance has reached its final destination.
MY fellow citizens of the Republic of South Sudan let us hope for the best to come; our raising of our flag on July 9, 2011 was one step followed by more steps. Let us feel proud in celebrating our 32 years of the May of 16 Day and hope for better to come.
Oh God Bless South Sudan.
For questions, comments or any concern, contact me: manonjok@gmail.com
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