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16.
Citizens delegate to politicians the functions of serving their
interests and financing governments through their taxes. Politicians
perform by providing services, such as law and order or communities
relatively free of pathogens. Citizens then enforce accountability
through elections and other means such as advocacy, legal actions,
naming and shaming campaigns. The people, however, need information
about how actions of the government have promoted their well-being.
They also need some mechanism for enforceability, to make sure
that politicians and policy-makers are rewarded for good action
and penalized for bad ones. Need I say transparency is the essence
of a democratic government.
17.The
most commonly cited means of holding the state accountable to
the public, as far as vertical accountability is concerned,
are electoral processes and public hearings. The government
and its officials explain and the people demonstrate their reactions.
18.
Another example includes Ministers, who are accountable to individual
constituents and citizens on the effects of government activity
upon them, such as school fees, taxes, medical levies, water
rates and others.
19
Public servants in rural areas usually find themselves directly
accountable to rural communities, farmers or parents of school
children. Many of these bodies may not have the power to impose
remedies or sanctions but they can call on Ministers and officials
for information and public explanations.
20.
Public accountability faces a lot of challenges which shield
ministers and officials from proper scrutiny and effective sanctions
for their conduct. Through various forms of coercion, both subtle
and blatant, government ability to impose obligations on citizens
has proved much stronger than the ability of citizens to discipline
politicians and policymakers. In many cases, citizens approach
the government and its officials as suppliants.
21.
Politicians often use the control over publicly provided services
as a mechanism of clientelism – for both citizens and
officials. In a system that lacks accountability relationships,
public service jobs (teachers, policemen) are given as political
favours, which in turn create a relationship not of accountability
but of political obligation. For instance, in many developing
countries, there are instances where appointments and deployment
practices are often determined as a result of individual’s
contributions to political activities. This is not peculiar
to our part of the world. But it becomes significant because
of the economic woes afflicting the vast majority of the population.
22
Thus vices such as nepotism, cronyism, tribalism, laziness,
corruption and the likes, lead to incompetence, insubordination,
outright disservice to the nation and delayed or non-delivery
of the public good.
23.
Lack of freedom of speech, free media, legal protection of freedom
of expression and “whistle-blowers” constitute serious
impediment to public accountability.
24.
Lack of civic education adversely affects the need to build
accountability of government. Civic education is about people
knowing their rights and knowing the powers and obligations
of their representatives. Civic education will help them to
form critical citizenry and empower them to make demands on
their representatives.
25.
Unnecessary hiding of information from the public, under the
guise of secrecy or confidentiality, inhibits public right to
know and thus seriously limits government accountability. If
information is made available to the public about budgets, decisions,
planned programmes and spending, people will find it easier
in discerning whether the government, be it local or central,
is serving their interest. Thus, transparency or openness to
public scrutiny is a vital mechanism for accountability.
26
Also countries that draw most of their income from extractive
industries such as oil, timber or export of minerals, are less
dependent on their people for revenues. This creates a disconnect
between the government and the society and invariably breeds
cover-ups and corruption.
Accountability in the Private Sector
27. Issues of accountability are not limited to the
public sector but also are applicable to the Private Sector.
Directors of companies have to reconcile their accounts to shareholders,
customers and employees and try to focus themselves on issue
of corporate governance. Companies should not forget that the
public requires from them corporate social responsibility. The
neglect of such social accountability has led to social upheavals
in many countries.
NGOs
28. Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) should
not be shielded from accountability as it would appear that
many of them limit not only on-line information about their
activities but also access to information about their decision-making
process. They often fail to provide information that is likely
to be of significant use to stakeholders, for example, how they
are spending their money and how well they have been achieving
their aims. Many of them hardly publish annual reports.
29.
We are aware that the majority of resources for the work of
most NGOs come from abroad and it is to them that the NGOs are
mostly accountable. Transparent reporting mechanisms should
operate to ensure that money donated is spent as expected and
that objectives agreed by the NGOs and their donors are met.
Unfortunately, this is rarely made public, and it has the potential
to skew the priorities of NGOs, and thus reduce their accountabilities
to the people they affect; that is, beneficiaries of their activities.
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