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[av_heading heading=’ FAITH, HOPE & CHARITY ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY IKE SEÑERES
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Monday. September 18, 2017
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IT’S A simple concept, but some people could not seem to fathom the fact that “governance” is not the same as “government”, and that the former does not only involve the “government”, but also the people as well. For that matter however, even the “government” as we know it belongs to the people because the people are the ones who give power to it. That much said, it goes without saying that the people must participate in “governance”, even if they are actually not part of the “government”. Since in theory “democracy” is supposed to be a social contract, it should also go without saying that everyone should participate in the democratic process and if that would really become the case, then we would really have participatory governance in place.
More often than not, when we use the term “government”, we refer to the people who work for it, and not the institutions that are supposed to work for us. Of course we could not blame those who are already very distrustful of both the government officials and the government institutions, but in the final analysis, we have only one country and if in the end our government institutions would not work, it would not be the fault of anyone else but ours. Sooner or later, we should realize that as we blame the government officials, we should also blame ourselves because we also partly own the government institutions that are supposed to make governance work.
I think that the problem with many citizens is that they expect government officials to do everything for them, regardless of whether they are appointed or elected. I think that the general thinking among these citizens is that they are not expected to do anything, because they have no part in the process of governance.
In reality however, there are institutions that would welcome the participation of citizens in the process of governance. Sad to say, the term “civil society” has already earned a bad reputation, but that should not mean that we should already throw it away or that we should stop using it. Just as I said that we have only one country, I would also say that there is only one “civil society”, and we really have no choice but to make it work, in much the same way that we have no choice but to fix our damaged society.
In a previous article, I wrote about the future of the environment that we should start fixing today. I now would say the same thing about our government that we should start fixing it today, so that the problems that we are seeing today would no longer be present in the future. Without any hesitation however, I would say that the root cause of our problems in government today is corruption. What that means is that not unless we are able to remove corruption today, in the present times, we will not be able to have a clean government in the future. In a manner of speaking, it could be said that corruption is a dragon that is so very strong and powerful, but that does not mean that it could not be slain.
I really would not want to make it sound too simplistic, but in order for the government of the future to work, it should have near-zero corruption. Perhaps it would be too much to aim for zero corruption that is why near-zero corruption would be good enough, unrealistic as it may be. Many might say that corruption may not even disappear even after a hundred years but just as I say that we only have one country, I would also say that there is only one thing that we could do in order to have a corruption free future, and that is to start fighting against it now. As we know it, there may be no country in the world that is totally corruption free, but nonetheless, there are many countries in the world that have good governance, even if corruption still exists.
For a lack of a more plausible explanation, I would say that there are only two things in common in the countries where there is good governance, and these are the strong parties and sound ideologies. These two should actually go hand in hand together, because it should really be a sound ideology that would make a party strong in the first place. I hesitate to say that the parties that have ruled this country since the birth of the Republic are not strong, because I would rather say instead that they did not have sound ideologies. I would hesitate to say the obvious, but it is a sound ideology that would give a strong party its discipline. Obviously as well, if a party could not keep discipline its own ranks, how could it discipline an entire country that it rules? (iseneres@yahoo.com/PN)
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