Citizens must demand good governance

The journey towards Vision 2030 calls for sacrifice, hard work, self-discipline and determination. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Oversight mechanisms should guard against arbitrariness and ensure accountability in the use of public resources.
  • The public sector has an important role in financing and providing social infrastructure and dispute resolution services.

All over the world, well-functioning countries share certain characteristics.

However, not all are pre-conditions for development. Many countries — including industrialised ones — fall short on a number of attributes.

Nor is there a single model to which Kenya or other African countries should aspire.

All systems of governance preserve political competition through participation in regular elections, but they differ in many ways.

Yet while the diversity among successful democracies suggests a variety of functional, institutional arrangements, effective public institutions generally have some common fundamental characteristics.

ORDER
The first is the capacity to maintain nationwide peace, law and order without which other government functions are compromised.

Second, States must secure individual liberties and equality before the law.

This has been a major institutional inadequacy in Kenya.

Secure property rights and transparent adjudication of disputes arising thereof are critical in shaping investment decisions.

Third, the State needs workable checks and balances on the arbitrary exercise of power.

Public decision-making must be transparent and predictable. Oversight mechanisms should guard against arbitrariness and ensure accountability in the use of public resources.

CORRUPTION
Once this institutional infrastructure is in place, the public sector has an important role in financing and providing social infrastructure and dispute resolution services.

Effective States raise revenue and supply these services in ways that contribute to development.

Where corruption is detected, legal and administrative sanctions must be implemented, regardless of the social and political status of perpetrators.

A free press and public watchdog organisations guard against abuse of power and reinforce checks and balances as well as effective service delivery.

Without these foundations of good political and economic governance, Kenya’s development will be sluggish or stalled.

It is therefore important for Kenyans to step back and review the development record promised by Vision 2030.

We all remember that the unveiling of Kenya Vision 2030 marked a milestone in Kenya’s development.

ECONOMY

We recall that the economy had recovered from the slow growth of below one per cent before 2002 to a projected growth of over seven per cent towards the end of 2007.

Indeed, if Kenyans care to look back at those five years, they represented the best phase of sustained economic growth in all sectors of Kenya’s economy.

We recall that Vision 2030 was to be implemented through five-year medium-term plans, starting with the first one which was to cover the period between 2008 and 2012.

But what were the foundations for Vision 2030? Were they in tandem with the foundations of good political and economic governance?

PROGRESS
Right from the beginning, it was found imperative to involve a broad cross-sector of the Kenyan population in the formulation of Vision 2030 to ensure national ownership.

It was after all a vehicle for accelerating transformation of Kenya into a rapidly industrialising middle-income nation over the next 12 years.

The journey to 2030 calls for sacrifice, hard work, self-discipline and determination.

Kenyans were confident that these challenges would be met in order to make Kenya globally competitive and prosperous, where every Kenyan will enjoy a high quality of life.

However, even as the government implements the Vision, it is important that the Kenyan people be given a status report of its implementation to answer such questions as: Where is the Vision today? Which flagship projects are being pursued? Why are poverty levels still so high?

Prof Gesami is an economist and chair of the Nelson Mandela Centre for African Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. [email protected]