TGONU should focus on improved services delivery, good governance, rule of law and accountability
By Lino Lual Lual, Juba, South Sudan
May 24, 2016 (SSB) — Improved governance for effective services delivery requires a unification, long-term strategy plan built upon the cooperation between government and citizens on how much confidence they are toward their government. It also important to having involves both public participation and the views of national institutions in the country. The rule of law, accountability and transparency are technical and legal issues at some levels, but also interactive to produce government that is legitimate, effective, and widely supported by peoples as well as a civil society that is strong, open and capable of playing some positive roles in politics and government.
This author considers goals for better governance to be identified as fellows hereafter, legitimacy, effective, responsive institutions and policies, understandable processes and outcomes. Giving politics its place in good governance. Building broad-based support for modification, paying close attention to spurs for leaders and citizens. Assessing public opinion. Strengthening checks and balances both administrative and political. Thinking regionally and staying focused on the long term. Good governance involves far more than the power of the state or the strength of political will, because the rule of law, transparency, and accountability are not merely technical questions of administrative procedure or institutional design.
They are outcomes of democratizing processes driven not only by committed leadership, but also by the participation of all concerns and contention among groups and interests in society processes that are most effective when sustained and restrained by legitimacy. Never have these concerns been linked to more momentous opportunities.
In this opinion, I suggest that good governance, the rule of law, transparency, and accountability will embody partnerships between states and societies and among citizens to sustained not by good intentions alone but by lasting, converging spurs and strong institutions in South Sudan. There are interdependent as well. Accountability requires transparency both function best where laws are sound and widely supported and the equitable enforcement of those laws raises major questions of accountability and transparency to cite just a few interconnections. Upholding these values requires a delicate but durable balance between self-interest and cooperation, citizens and officials must see good governance not only as an ideal, it is also as improving their own lives where rule of law is strong, people uphold the law not out of fear because they have a stake in its effectiveness.
Transparency too rests on a partnership, officials must make information available, and there must be people and groups with reasons and opportunities to put information to use. Chief among those are an independent judiciary and a free, competitive, responsible press, but an active civil society is critical too. Government of national unity could make it clear this time in period before reaching general election what has been achieve to South Sudanese citizens? How and where actions has taken place? Who has involved himself or herself? And by what standards decisions are made? It demonstrates that it has abided by those standards.
How can we harness those services to build good governance while maintaining the balance between openness and effectiveness?
The answer is fundamentally, have to do with democratization and justice. Years ago Rustow (1970) pointed out that the factors that sustain democracy literacy, affluence, multi-party politics, a middle class, and so forth are not necessarily the ones that created it. Democracy, he argued, emerges out of prolonged and inconclusive political struggle.
In those struggles days in South Sudan, Democracy was the original and primary aim, it was sought as a means to some other end or it came as a fortuitous byproduct of the struggle.
Many of such institutions will have the task of checking the excesses of the powerful in the name of ordinary citizens: courts, for example, must enforce laws of fair play, such as honest appointments and basic business slide as well as enforcing contracts into wrong hands. That potential mismatch means that institutions must not be well designed. State and society must be able to influence each other within limits, policies must respond to social realities and demands, just as participation must be subject to the rule of law. Legitimate paths of access between state and society are just as important as boundaries between them, where legitimate access is insufficient it will become an illicit commodity to be bought and sold.
Good governance is not just a matter of deciding to be good people, instead, officials and citizens must believe they will be better off under a restructured system of governance. Alterations have their costs, too: old partnerships and privileges and self-serving public-private linkages may be disrupted while taxes may be collected and regulations enforced more effectively.
In attempting to improve policy and implementation to rely too much on laws and top-down policymaking. Controls on administrative, fiscal, and personnel systems can become so strict that managers cannot manage and elected officials to get their programs implemented.
The resulting inflexibility wastes resources and opportunities, produces policies that are unresponsive to social realities and can increase incentives to corruptions. There is a need for policies that increase the space for debate and consultation, encourage innovation and pursue desired outcomes with positive inducements rather than through prohibitions alone. Procedural controls may generate massive amounts of information but if it comes in forms that only some officials can understand or if it is generated predominantly by citizens’ giving information to government rather than government opening up to citizens, transparency is not aided and people are unlikely to develop a personal stake in it. There is no doubt that government of national unity requires lasting leadership and commitment from above that identifying champion an important early stage in providing such leadership. But such initiatives cannot be effective if they are confined to blue-ribbon commissions that hand down proclamations or to a one-man show. Though it takes time efforts, resources and services delivery will involve sharing the credit of achievement or improvement to transitional government of national unity.
Modification leaders who cannot demonstrate broad-based and deep social support will find it all the more difficult to sway officials and interest groups skeptical about or openly opposed to improvement.
Over time, high-profile efforts that do not succeed will lead to public cynicism and will make the next round of reform even more challenging that need government of national unity to work hard to emphasize public goods such as efficiency, honesty, cultural empathy and the exclusion of private benefits. Other kinds of appeals that better governance would cut taxes, make it easier to find jobs in a revived economy, protect one’s family and property receive too little attention, even when the goal is enlisting the participation and support of civil society. As a result, good-governance efforts encounter collective action problems. People decide that if reform improves governance for anyone it will do so for all and thus that their own efforts are inconsequential or even unwanted. Extensive efforts must be made to persuade citizens on government’s functionaries and political leaders that what do they stand to benefit from reform?
While a measure of coordination among segments of government is essential and also be able to check its own excesses. An ombudsman system to which citizens can make complaints and reports may also be valuable and confidential that they will not face reprisals so that their reports will be taken seriously.
Many of government’s problems result from a shortage of resources or a lack of state technical and political capacity. But others persist because someone benefits from them, a fact that reformers cannot ignore. Serious reforms may encounter increasing resistance within government or from segments of the public to the extent that they begin to gain traction yet it will be at precisely those points that active support from top leadership and from civil society may be most important. Transparency and accountability problems are particularly likely to persist because of vested interests in government, society and reformers must be aware that at times those resisting enhanced transparency and accountability will go through the motions filing reports, producing data, carrying out reviews and assessments in ways that actually conceal rather than revealing and attacking governance problems. Here too, outside monitors’ auditors, legislative oversight bodies, investigating judges will be essential.
Too often governance reform is a short-lived issue. This is particularly the case following a crisis or scandal, once matters settle down it is easy to conclude that all is well and governance problems have been fixed.
Particularly with respect to the rule of law and its social foundations, governance reform will take a generation or more, not just a few months or years. Much the same is true of transparency and accountability too, in the sense that agency, political elite and civil service may need to be changed. More rapid progress may be possible in those areas to the extent that individuals can be replaced and the incentive systems of institutions overhauled.
However, bureaucrats will need periodic retraining, elected officials who will need continuing information on governance problems (and continuing incentives to fix them), and citizen support will be required over the long term. Here too, public education will be an integral part of any effort to deepen the rule of law and to improve transparency and accountability
The author is a master of strategic studies at Centre for Peace and Development Studies University of Juba, He can be reached via Linolual69@yahoo.com
The opinion expressed here is solely the view of the writer. The veracity of any claim made are the responsibility of the author, not PaanLuel Wël: South Sudanese Bloggers (SSB) website. If you want to submit an opinion article or news analysis, please email it to paanluel2011@gmail.com. SSB do reserve the right to edit material before publication. Please include your full name, email address and the country you are writing.
About Post Author
