Govt Promises, Citizens Expectations And Impactful Reform Options
By Abdulwarees Solanke
As citizens and political leaders of many countries of the developing world including ours often advocate for and promote reform and change, I am forced to launch a rhetoric in asking: Are we really prepared for genuine reform and change? My question in this reflection today is borne from a series of other questions I will be raising immediately. First, what aspect of our public life is not challenged?
Secondly, which sector do we not complain about? Third, which institution of state, in our reckoning rates as perfect in its processes and services? Finally, which group of players or actors in the public sector gets our applause or pass mark in their dealings with citizens or the public they are paid to serve as public servants? In virtually every country of the developing world, there is little or no aspect of public life that is not challenged or not begging for serious intervention or exorcism of certain endemic malaise that cheapen the human life or existence.
So, in what is commonly denoted as dividends of democracy in these countries operating democracy as a system of government, there are great expectations from the citizenry on what their governments must do to assuage the crippling challenges they daily grapple with or what they endure as existential problems in terms of friendly policies, redeeming programmes and impacting initiatives usually defined as palliatives, incentives or mitigation measures.
These challenges and issues, ironically are in legion ranging from education to health, public transportation, housing, safety of life and property summed together. cry for change and quest for reform are in terms of pains of poverty, poor access to social infrastructure, ravaging unemployment, unequal opportunities for empowerment. Crying for improvement, reform and change over deteriorating physical public infrastructural facilities, urban decay, environmental pollution and under-representation in the governance process in which they feel excluded in the decision making on issues that affect them directly, the citizens just want a better quality of life.
These malaises evidently are the dominant content of the mass and social media which are also often exaggerated or mischievously presented in many instances, thus promoting the phenomenon of fake news and hate speech that indeed fan embers of violence and destruction, including loss of election and military takeover in many of these countries. Therefore, during seasons or cycles of election that political parties jostle for power, these realities of cause form the crux of campaign promises and pledges, party manifestoes reform agenda and commitments on improvement of public welfare by candidates seeking the electoral mandates of their constituents to various levels of political representation or offices, from counsellors at ward levels to the presidency at the federal level.
Nigeria is not exception in this culture of electioneering. Different appeasing slogans, appealing radio and television jingles and creative messages are abundantly crafted and produced to reach the hearts of the electorate either to sway them to vote in a particular direction, continue in office or return to power. So, immediately after the elections, the citizens expect from the government that they invested their franchise in in voting it to power unravel some magic wand in the redemption of the electoral campaign promises in sharing or distribution of dividends of democracy as return on investment.
This quest for dividends is understandable because election in these countries can be likened to a contract or a transaction between the led and the leaders. After all, what motivated them in the first instance to vote a particular party or candidate or in a particular direction is their faith that their fate of pain, misery and misfortune will come to an end in the new order that promises change and better life for all.
Also, their assumption is that governance is very simple and straight forward. They think it is just to win election, sworn in to power, give instruction, roll out measures promised during campaigns and act with dispatch to bid farewell to poverty as if governance is abracadabra or magic. The ordinary citizen cannot appreciate the complexity of governance and reform process. They cannot understand what it entails to initiate public policies to really address those existential issues or tackle so many endemic structural challenges that confront government when deciding what to do to assure a provision or restoration of quality life.
Rationally, the path of reform is a very narrow and difficult one. It is a path encumbered by realities of pain and apathy or lethargy on part of would-be beneficiaries, compromises, abuses, misconceptions and insincerity on the part of some agents and actors and implementing organs in the policy process. Also, because of certain political realities, there may be a semblance of lack of political will on the part of those expected to drive or support the reform process or assist its implementation. Here lies the crux of what the politicians angling to gain power promise, how serious the impatient citizenry take such promises and how prepared is the elected government to navigate between the citizenry’s great expectations and the realities impactful options before the government, options that must necessary be bitter pills of reform and not necessarily the succulent cakes of palliatives that would not fundamentally address the challenges in the shortest period the citizens ordinary expect Eldorado will come.
