The West boasts some
of the best open public sector regimes in the world yet the West has found it
necessary to put in place robust access to public information legislation. There
is a very good reason for this—to ensure that everything taking place in the
public sector happens in the medium of openness. Openness ensures transparency,
accountability, citizen participation and government responsiveness. The story
is different in Africa where secrecy is mistaken for safety. As a result, in
Africa, passing of ATI law becomes a pitched battle often between the citizenry
together with civil society organisations (part of which the media are) and
governments. The picture is worrisome even in those countries considered
beacons of democracy on the Continent. Take the example of Ghana, often
described as a model democracy yet even there, passing of ATI law has become
a complicated dance of one step forward and two steps backwards.
As we speak, almost
every country on the Continent is undergoing public sector reforms of some kind,
often following some crisis of telling proportions. In Malawi, these reforms are
coming hot on the heels of the worst public pillage ever at Capitol Hill, the
beehive of government activities in the country. Despite all this stench of
corruption, very few in Malawi seem to see sense in passing ATI legislation
into law to stave off a repeat of that cardinal plunder.
Just where does ATI fit
in public sector reforms? I think the best answer should come from the
connection between democracy and public sector.
Malawi as a democratic
country runs on the wheels of a liberal Constitution in which is incorporated the
Bill of Rights. And we are told democracy is a system of government by the
people, for the people, and of those people. In Malawi, this means democracy is
the voice of the 17 million plus people living therein. In practice, it makes
it impossible for all these 17 million plus people to express their voices
together. Democracy being what it is finds a way to ensure all these people
have a say in their government through some form of contract between all the citizens
on one hand, and a few trustworthy people to run the people’s affairs on the
other. This special contract, a kind of relationship in trust, is made
legitimate at elections where these few people are given some authority through
the Constitution to guide the affairs of the country in terms of utilization of
resources and upholding of the rule of law. In a way, those in power are given
the authority at elections on trust; it is not theirs; it is the people’s. And
because it is the people’s, the Constitution puts a mechanism so that these
people are given extra eyes to see what those in power, those holding the
authority or power on behalf of them, the people, do.
This special contract
arrangement has the basis in the Constitution itself. Section 6 of this
Constitution provides that authority to govern is from the people. At the same
time, section 7 ensures that, in exercising that power, the executive must take
into account express wishes of the people. This is also provided for in
sections 8 and 12(ii), which respectively, talk of interests of Malawians and
power on trust. And to ensure that these people are afforded an opportunity to
monitor whether those in power abide by this contract principle, section 37 of
the Constitution gives the people right of access to information.
Now, if the public
sector, and the public sector is the machinery or mechanism through which
government serves its people, undergoes any change or innovation, it naturally
follows that those people who gave those in power the authority to lead them
should be afforded eyes to see what is happening in the course of those
changes.
In simple language, ATI
legislation is an enablement mechanism through which the people follow what
their government is doing, to monitor whether these public innovations are
indeed taking place in their interest, and whether the motive are in line with
the aspirations of them, the people.
The second reason why
ATI is necessary in these reforms is that these reforms are taking place in an
arrangement that inevitably demands presence of ATI.
From the mid-1970s to
around 2000, public sector reforms used a management strategy known as New
Public Management, NPM. This means that before the mid-1970s, PS reforms were
modelled on a different strategy.
Before the 1970s, the
public sector, everywhere, took care of all the affairs of the people as far as
providing public goods and services was concerned. It kind ran like a welfare
state, and this philosophy or approach was known as (Weberian or bureaucratic) Public
Administration. In the mid-1970s, mostly after the oil crises of the 1970s and
the failure of the US dollar as the main determinant of currency exchange regime,
it became apparent that carrying all the responsibility in public goods and
service delivery was unsustainable to governments including those in the West. From
that time, governments began to borrow practices from the private sector so
that the public sector should be run the same way the private sector is, i.e.
running it as a business to make profit. This approach is known as New Public
Management, NPM, and it used privatization (selling some public enterprises to
private hands for efficiency and effectiveness), decentralization (giving away
decision-making power to some public agency away from the headquarters) and
public-private partnership, among many. In Malawi NPM (and they arrived in the late
1980s in the cauldron of World Bank-IMF through a package described as structural
adjustment programs or SAPs) mostly used privatization and decentralization.
The legal instruments that gave these two NPM strategies legitimacy were the
Privatisation Act passed in 1996, and the Local Government Act, passed in 1998.
Towards the year 2000,
it was realized that the best form of running the public sector had to take
into account human rights issues—stakeholder engagement, transparency,
equalities agenda (gender, ethnic groups, age, religion, etc.), ethical and
honest behaviour, accountability, sustainability, et cetera and had to look at
the people and other organisations as partners rather than as customers. In
other words, the idea of strict business was being replaced by the idea of
collaboration, engagement and listening to the people on what value they want
the public sector have or demonstrate. Whereas New Public Management was
preoccupied with changing the internal structures of the public sector, this
new form of management was preoccupied with horizontal approach to management,
i.e., partnering with the people, NGOs, et cetera. This new form of management
is associated with governance rather than mere management. Thus this new form of
running the private sector came to be known by different names: Post-New Public
Management, or New Public Governance, or Networked Governance, or
Whole-of-Government, or Collaborative Government, or e-Government, or ‘small
government and big public’, et cetera. Post-NPM uses mostly PPP. This is why
the Public-Private Partnership Act was passed in 2010 to give legal direction
on this mode of running the public sector.
In short, these current
public sector reforms are taking place under the New Public Governance banner
and not under the Weberian (bureaucratic) Public Administration, or under New
Public Management banner. An important component of New Public Governance with
its human right approach to reforms is engagement between government on one
hand, and the people and the civil society on the other.
Engagement entails
interaction between the parties, sharing of information, giving the people an
opportunity to scrutinize accounts, providing them with reasons for various
decisions, et cetera. And the three pillars of engagement are access to
information, consultation and citizen or public participation. In fact, access
to information is described in many pieces of literature on New Public
Governance as the bedrock for effective citizen participation.
In short, the current
mode of running the public sector entails that issues of human rights form the
hub, and one most important instrument that enhances this collaboration is ATI
legislation. It would thus make little sense to engage in ambitious reforms
without putting in place a mechanism that will afford the citizens the capacity
to see inside the PS reforms because through this, the people can check against
abuse and corruption and seek accountability for decisions made. At the same
time, through ATI legislation, the people can give feedback on the reforms for
government to effect improvements.
So where do the media
come in?
Well, the media are
part of the partnership as the ‘fourth branch of government’. Access to
information is not for them; it is for the people, but the media being a friend
to the people, it is, in some way, theirs too. In fact, the media too, are
accountable to them, the people.
These reasons and many others
should help us see sense in encouraging our government to give the people the
opportunity to participate in these reforms through ATI law, robust ATI law. Such
participation creates ownership in the people, and ownership is an important
ingredient at the policy implementation stage, for it triggers acceptance and
with it, willingness to participate and enthusiasm to support, after all there
is already a general consensus that these reforms are necessary.
No comments:
Post a Comment