GILLIAN LUCKY

On the brink of what will no doubt be a great cel­e­bra­tion next week Tues­day to mark the one-year an­niver­sary of this regime in of­fice, I open­ly call for all law-abid­ing and dis­cern­ing cit­i­zens to spare some time for crit­i­cal analy­sis of the sub­ject of good gov­er­nance. I do so be­cause it is clear that we are ma­tur­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly, per­haps at a rate not fast enough for those who wish to see the day when votes of con­science and not blind par­ty loy­al­ty will be the or­der of the day. The Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion has de­fined good gov­er­nance as "the trans­par­ent and ac­count­able man­age­ment of all a coun­try's re­sources for its eq­ui­table and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment."

A num­ber of in­di­ca­tors of good gov­er­nance are list­ed in­clud­ing eq­ui­ty, pri­ma­cy of law in the man­age­ment and al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources, an in­de­pen­dent and ac­ces­si­ble ju­di­cial sys­tem and trans­paren­cy. The com­mis­sion recog­nis­es that cor­rup­tion is the main ob­sta­cle to good gov­er­nance.

And so as I write I feel con­fi­dent that this regime will not in­ter­pret my re­quest for a re­view of its first year of op­er­a­tion as in­cite­ment for ad­verse com­ment about its per­for­mance in gov­ern­ment but rather en­cour­age­ment to those who are tru­ly pa­tri­ot­ic and civic mind­ed to as­sess whether we are firm­ly on the road of good gov­er­nance.

Way we were

Based on the ut­ter­ances of sev­er­al of its mem­bers, the Gov­ern­ment has right­ly ac­knowl­edged that there is room for im­prove­ment and so should be anx­ious to hear the views from those who are not re­quired or sim­ply refuse to sing for their sup­per. In no way am I sug­gest­ing that the coun­try is worse off than be­fore be­cause in my pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cles writ­ten at a time when the for­mer gov­ern­ment was in of­fice , I lament­ed that we were go­ing down a rocky road that seemed to be lead­ing to despo­tism. There was a feel­ing that a dark cloud per­ma­nent­ly hung over us and that that regime had ac­quired an acute and chron­ic case of ar­ro­gance that was dif­fi­cult if not im­pos­si­ble to cure.

Fool­ish and ab­surd ex­pla­na­tions were giv­en for le­git­i­mate con­cerns raised by the pop­u­la­tion and the es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty on­ly made the sit­u­a­tion more un­ten­able. Many in­ter­pret­ed the sur­prise an­nounce­ment of a snap gen­er­al elec­tion and the over­whelm­ing vic­to­ry of the cur­rent regime as di­vine in­ter­ven­tion and, cer­tain­ly, it was a wake-up call for those who al­lowed in­dif­fer­ence, ig­no­rance, greed and cor­rup­tion to brand the type of gov­er­nance that was be­ing met­ed out to the peo­ple. And while I ap­pre­ci­ate that a per­for­mance ap­praisal of this gov­ern­ment would in­volve a com­par­i­son of those who gov­erned be­fore, I am con­vinced that many cit­i­zens are frus­trat­ed with the fre­quent use of the trans­gres­sions of the past regime to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion from fo­cus­ing on the con­duct of this Gov­ern­ment that calls for full trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

More than op­pos­ing

The dis­cus­sion about good gov­er­nance must not be lim­it­ed to an eval­u­a­tion of the Gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment of all the coun­try's re­sources and af­fairs of the na­tion. It is cru­cial that the as­sess­ment be ex­tend­ed to in­clude the func­tion­ing of the Op­po­si­tion and whether it has been hold­ing the Gov­ern­ment ac­count­able and, when nec­es­sary, work­ing to­geth­er with the Gov­ern­ment, for the good of the na­tion.

It is ob­vi­ous­ly a chal­lenge for the Op­po­si­tion that it on­ly has 12 of the 41 seats in the Low­er House and such a small num­ber means that there is greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on Op­po­si­tion mem­bers to be com­pe­tent and alert in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties.

As it stands, the Gov­ern­ment has the 3/5 spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty and so it can pass im­por­tant and far-reach­ing leg­is­la­tion with­out the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion. While there are some good de­baters on the Op­po­si­tion bench with the leader Dr Row­ley be­ing rat­ed as one in the cat­e­go­ry of best in the House, the work of the Op­po­si­tion has to be shared by all and there are some who clear­ly are not up to the task. In the Up­per House there are mem­bers who have dis­played the aca­d­e­m­ic acu­men to take on the might of the Gov­ern­ment but there must be sus­tained pres­sure to ques­tion the Gov­ern­ment and hold it ac­count­able to the pub­lic. That hav­ing been said, there have been in­stances in the re­cent past when the Op­po­si­tion has proven that it is up to the chal­lenge of mean­ing­ful de­bate and in­ci­sive ques­tion­ing of the Gov­ern­ment on mat­ters of state.

Use­ful lessons

If asked one book that every politi­cian should read, I would say An­i­mal Farm by George Or­well. The nov­el ad­dress­es the strug­gle of a rev­o­lu­tion and the lost ben­e­fit of change be­cause of cor­rupt lead­er­ship, gullible fol­low­ers, cyn­ic by­standers, and naive ide­al­ists. The char­ac­ters de­pict­ed could be aligned to po­lit­i­cal per­son­al­i­ties that tran­scend time, there­by mak­ing the nov­el rel­e­vant for eras past and those to come. It is an emo­tion­al sto­ry that proves that si­lence in­stead of chal­lenge and in­dif­fer­ence in­stead of gen­uine in­ter­est could fa­cil­i­tate the de­struc­tion of the ben­e­fits of a no­ble rev­o­lu­tion. The risk is that in­stead of striv­ing to get it right and re­frain­ing from be­com­ing the mon­sters in the sto­ry, many politi­cians may ac­tu­al­ly jus­ti­fy their ac­tions as they em­u­late the vil­lain roles to the hilt.

Val­ue of change

The val­ue of a prod­uct, in this case the Gov­ern­ment, should be based pri­mar­i­ly on the proven mer­it of its sub­stance and not the in­her­ent flaws of its com­pe­ti­tion. To do oth­er­wise would prob­a­bly re­sult in a mere ex­change of prod­uct and even­tu­al­ly the recog­ni­tion by the buy­er that there has re­al­ly been no sig­nif­i­cant up­grade or ben­e­fit con­ferred by the change. The Prime Min­is­ter has in­di­cat­ed that soon there will be a re­align­ment of min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo- lios and by so do­ing it is ex­pect­ed that there will be bet­ter per­for­mance by min­is­ters and greater ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in gov­er­nance. Al­though the out­right re­moval of non-per­form­ing min­is­ters is not a hall­mark of the West­min­ster sys­tem of gov­ern­ment, it is hoped that this part­ner­ship will do all with­in its pow­er to make the right de­ci­sions so that there will be a rea­son for all to cel­e­brate.