Accountability is the new buzzword in international development circles, the World Bank says in a new book it launched earlier this week. The book, Accountability Through Public Opinion: From Inertia to Public Action, asks questions like: “What does it mean to make governments accountable to their citizens?”; “How do you create genuine demand for accountability among citizens?”; “How do you move citizens from inertia to public action?” It surmises that “Governments will only be accountable if there are incentives for them to do so—and only an active and critical public will change the incentives of government officials to make them responsive to citizens’ demands.”
The editors of Accountability Through Public Opinion, Sina Odugbemi and Taeku Lee use material from more than 30 “accountability practitioners and thinkers” to illustrate among other things, the relationship between accountability, information and the media and how to mobilize public opinion. They believe that “…an active and critical public is the surest means to achieve accountability that will benefit the citizens in developing countries.”
The book’s target group includes policy-makers and governance specialists working within the international development community, national governments, grassroots organizations and activists among others. It should be required reading for anyone involved in administering public funds—whether taxpayers’ money or grant aid or otherwise—and the members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) will no doubt agree.
On Mondays, the PAC—chaired by PNCR-1G Member of Parliament Volda Lawrence—meets at Parliament Office, having summoned central or local government bodies, and attempts to hold their feet to the fire regarding discrepancies noted in audited public accounts. Unfortunately, these audits are not at all current; they go back some years and often the person or persons responsible are no longer with the government agency. Worse still is when the same errors are repeated year after year.
Their ire is very often raised, but these MPs continue to try to raise the bar on accountability even when the hearings become farcical. A case in point was the meeting held on Monday last, when as it turned out the Assistant Field Auditor of Region Nine (Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo), listed as owing the administration money, was part of the team defending why outstanding advances had not been collected over a period of 12 years. At that same meeting too, it was revealed that over $15 million given to government officials as “conference advances” between 2004 and 2008 might never be recouped because some of the people have since died while others could not be found.
There supposedly is stricter monitoring in place now.
Reports such as these do nothing to stir the apathy which the Guyanese public finds itself mired in. There must be acknowledgement at some level that the money from the public purse being thrown around almost at will, comes from their taxes; yet citizens do nothing. Perhaps it is because they believe nothing will happen if they decide to address the issue or maybe because the accounts being perused are not current.
It should be noted though that long before these issues become audited accounts, quite often it is the citizen auditors—the men and women who belong to various communities—who see that contracts are not being adhered to; that John Doe who works at agency X has bought a car or a house far above his means and who knows how he did it. And it is at this level that the demand for accountability should begin.
Whistle-blowing as a measure of patriotism needs to be re-inculcated in all of us. Someone once said that “the chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.” Those who stand by and watch them do it, without calling them out on their misdeeds, must, therefore, be their accomplices.
