Leaders’ accountability
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By Zechariah Manyok Biar
March 27, 2011 — Those who read my article, “Good governance and its
importance in the independent South Sudan” on January 5, 2011,
remember that leaders’ accountability for their action to the people
was one of the elements of good governance that I promised to write
articles on. I have already written articles on security of citizens,
respect for law or rule of law, and fair management of public
expenditure. The remaining elements to write articles on include
leaders’ accountability for their actions to the people, political
transparency, and meaningful citizen participation. But these elements
share the same idea of accountability. I will touch them all in this
article.
Accountability mainly means the external scrutiny and counting. It has
political, administrative, and financial components. According to
Anders Hanberger, “Accountability for finances has to do with
controlling how well the responsible individuals or departments have
performed their obligations and functions.” I am not going to focus
much on financial accountability in this article because my article on
fair management of public spending has touched some ideas on the
issue. I am going to focus on political and administrative
accountability in this article.
In political accountability, citizens have a greater responsibility in
making sure that “power, individuals or departments, have paid due
attention to ethical standards such as fairness and equity.” Our
problem today in South Sudan is that our citizens are not yet well
informed about their democratic rights. But that is not an excuse for
not holding leaders accountable.
Elected representatives are supposed to hold the executive
administration accountable for policy implementation and citizens
should play “the role of holding the elected representatives to
account for the general direction of public policy,” as Hanberger puts
it. That is the participatory administration in a democratic
government.
Today in South Sudan, we think about the government as the executive
only. The President, the Vice President, the Ministers, and the
Governors are the only people we blame for what goes wrong in the
country, which is justified to a larger extent. However, executive is
a drop in the ocean. Legislators, civil servants, and the general
public have a greater role to play in good governance. A weak
parliament and a weak civil service mean a weak system of governance
in which scapegoat becomes the order of daily affairs.
Having said the above, we should remember that the people-based
accountability system would be easy said than done in our current
system of decentralized governance. Hanberger defines decentralized
governance as “forms of governance originating from the centre, which
have been devised for local and regional levels, as well as governance
that evolves from the discretion of local and regional government, and
governance that develops in local networks and partnerships.”
Since I am part of the system now in South Sudan, I experience the
difficulties of a decentralized system of governance. It is becoming
increasingly difficult to distinguish what the state policy is at
policy implementation level as well as on the prevention of community
clashes. Legislators in the federal parliament in South Sudan avoid
their responsibility by saying that the government of state will deal
with a particular pressing issue even when the role of legislators in
the process is clear. The state government, on the other hand, avoids
the responsibility by saying that a system is controlled in Juba. This
confuses citizens on who to hold accountable.
The current operation of South Sudan police is a good example. When
there is a tribal conflict, a decentralized police take side instead
of controlling the situation. That is a big problem.
The other problem is the lack of rapid response from the decentralized
police. Recently in Wanglei Payam of Twic East County, Jonglei State,
civilians fought for six hours on March 3, 2011 without any
intervention from the police. The police Commissioner in Jonglei State
was on his way to Juba when the gun-fighting started at about nine
o’clock in the morning in Wanglei area. So he could not do anything.
The central command of police could not send an urgent intervention
force because of the decentralization policy. So who do you hold
accountable here when you are a concerned citizen? Not clear.
I should remind my readers that I am not against decentralization.
What I am saying is the difficulty of leaders’ accountability to their
people in a decentralized system. It is challenging.
But a solution can be found, since we have a decentralized system of
government in other countries. We can learn from those countries on
how to improve on leaders’ accountability to their people. In those
countries, citizens are active in sharing the responsibility with
policy makers by providing them with needed information, and the
policy makers respond and act on the information they receive from
citizens without any excuse. But these kinds of responses can be
possible only when the policies on decentralization are clear.
The giving of information is not free of challenges either.
Information that our citizens give sometimes is mixed with rumors. The
solution to this problem is that the Members of Parliament should
visit their constituencies from time to time to find out growing
problems at their early stages. They should encourage dialogues among
different communities so that rumors that provoke tribal conflicts are
reduced. I will write on the idea of dialogue later when I turn my
attention on how to solve our current tribal conflicts in South Sudan.
Other possible solution is that the media should be supported as part
of leaders’ accountability to general public. The media in every
government is one of the important tools that force wise leaders
examine their daily performances in the government, or even in the
private sector. Only leaders who do not want to improve on their
performances hate the media.
However, media personnel should be responsible in their criticisms of
leaders. They must always be objective. They must always base their
reports and criticisms on facts. Freedom of speech is good when it is
constructive, but it is destructive when it is irresponsible.
All in all, the accountability of leaders in their action towards the
people of South Sudan can only work, to borrow Hanberger’s phrase, if
“public actors and institutions join networks and partnerships in
order to resolve pressing problems and challenges” in our newest
nation in the world. Scapegoat tactics practiced by some of our people
must be discouraged in our country if we are to achieve the freedom
and the happiness that we fought for over the last two decades.
Zechariah Manyok Biar, BA. Edu., MACM, MSSW. He can be reached at
[email protected]
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