Accountability
A couple of months ago, I thought the president of a club I belonged to had made a very bad mistake. I was incensed, and having paid an exorbitant amount for membership, I thought I’d use my rights as a member to hold him to account. So, I e-mailed him, asking him to explain himself, and he graciously agreed to see me personally. Shamefully, I let my ’schedule’ get the better of me, and I never actually did end up meeting him.
On a micro level, it’s a sad tale of personal failure on my part. But I think there are valuable lessons to be extrapolated from this episode, when it comes to talking about accountability.
As always, we are told to create an alternative government. One of the favourite ‘must-haves’ in any alternative manifesto is devolution - devolve decision-making and authority to the lowest possible level.
Amongst the many arguments in favour, two spring instantly to mind. One is a conceptual argument - one of the central themes of last year’s Fabian autumn conference was revitalising local government, in order to revitalise democracy itself. Of course, Britain is quite a few steps ahead of us - for one thing, they actually have local council elections. But the principle is the same - the more local decision-making is, the more people feel they actually have the ability to influence government. And democracy flourishes when people feel that their voice counts for something.
Democracy works when you can wake up in the morning, find that your trash hasn’t been collected for a week now; complain to the relevant local council office; take it up with a local councilor when it’s been four days and no action’s been taken; attend a public meeting the week after and denounce the councilor openly when he fails to respond to your earlier complaint; and in the following elections a year after, boot the current crew out and replace them with people who actually get the job done. Of course, this is very much simplified; and of course, democracy would work even better if the problem was resolved at a far earlier stage, but at the extreme, this would be what should happen.
And that’s both a practical argument - that sequence of events makes local councilors accountable to their people, in the sense that they can be denounced and booted out, not just continue sitting prettily in their invulnerable smugness - and part of our earlier argument about democracy as well, because when something like that happens, then, and only then, can people actually feel some value in democracy after all.
Having said that, local council elections alone are merely a necessary prerequisite for accountability, but not a sufficient one. We need genuine alternatives, for one thing – if I remember correctly, one of M. Bakri Musa’s arguments against them is that we would merely be replacing a bunch of incompetents with another bunch of incompetents. Nuff’ said.
We need the institutional structures – the replies from the officers; ready access to councilors; open meetings; and a chance to openly criticise and demand answers from councilors in front of everyone who cares to listen.
But, we also need willingness from the rakyat to actually take up the challenge of accountability. This is the part which I failed in our initial example – all the structures were there, but when push came to shove, I didn’t take my chance to hold my leader to account.
The UK experience, based on what I heard during the conference, manifests a related problem in the form of ‘monopolisation’. Basically, the same tiny minority are the only ones who bring up issues time and time again; they’re the only ones who bother turning up and complaining; and as a result, their concerns are given a disproportionate amount of importance, whilst the legitimate concerns of the majority are ignored because the majority just don’t bother to do anything. Not pretty.
The core issue here is that people aren’t making use of the democratic institutions given to them. In Malaysia, our first step needs to be digging up those institutions once again, e.g. local council elections. But this shift in policy must be accompanied by a corresponding willingness by the rakyat to use them. Without the institutions, democratic accountability cannot happen; but even with the institutions in place, you still need the right attitudes to make it happen. The revitalisation of democracy needs local decision-making to kick it off, but it has to be reciprocated on the rakyat’s part.
Yes, we need to win government, or else institutional reform cannot happen. But ‘vote for change’ has to be more than just voting Keadilan, not BN – it has to be a desire to demand one’s due, and a readiness to confront our leaders head-on when they don’t do what they’re supposed to do. We have to keep reminding people – it’s not about voting us in so that we’ll introduce local council elections; it’s about voting us in so that you can then vote one of our candidates in as your mayor, then proceed to blast him when he fails to do his job a few months after. Without the follow-up, reform is meaningless.
We have an opportunity. Initiatives such as Nat’s bettermalaysia.com are working to fight apathy and mobilise people to hold this government accountable. Let us then take the message one step further – holding this government to account is only the beginning; once we’re in, you have to make sure we fulfill our promises, and hold us to account just as fiercely as you did the previous government. If we can achieve that, then introducing local council elections will actually mean something.
Don’t follow my footsteps – when it comes to accountable government, there’s no such thing as ‘I’m too busy.’ And if we all believe that, then I think trash collection, amongst many other far more significant problems, may start to see some improvements after all.
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Yes, totally agree with your idea here.
But allow me to highlight the simple political reality in Malaysia. Local authority positions have become “prizes” used by the ruling party from the central level to reward loyalty on the ground. Therefore it’s still too early to promote the idea before we *fix* the central government.
IMHO, what is more important is to educate rakyat of their fundamental rights that have been taken away because of their ignorance. Worse still, being fooled by BN’s money politics in exchange for their rights.
“Kembalikan hak-hak rakyat!”