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SOME INSTITUTIONS NEED TO BE RETIRED

Nov 13, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

 

 

The strengthening of institutions is vital to the process of perfecting our democracy and ensuring that these institutions are effective and efficient. The strengthening of institutions of oversight and accountability is important in fighting corruption and improving good governance.
As such priority has to be given to developing strong institutions because without them the rule of law will suffer and democracy will be undermined.
But not all institutions that we have need to be improved upon; not all of them need to be reformed. Many of them have outlived their usefulness and need to be dumped.
When it comes to these institutions that have become relics of the past, unsuited to modern government, it is no use carping on their absence and no use suggesting that this absence undermines constitutional rule.
Some institutions have their origins in a colonial administration and created the façade of fairness and meritocracy. Others were of more recent vintage, ill-conceived and with the possibility of assuming the status of a Leviathan.
Guyana has to undertake a serious assessment about some of these latter institutions and whether instead of wasting taxpayers’ money on them, decide if they should not be dumped in their entirety.
The first of these is the Office of the Ombudsman. This office is said to be there to provide a resort to those who feel they have been wronged because of inefficiencies and malfeasance in public office. But how effective in our history has been the Office of the Ombudsman? The number of complaints that have been filed is in many respects an estimate of public confidence in this office and the records will pronounce on just how confident the public has been in the years when there was an Ombudsman.
A decision of the Ombudsman cannot be enforced. As such, public officials can ignore this office without peril. There is nothing that the Ombudsman can do other than to report his findings and while these findings carry moral weight, Governments have been known to ignore such influences especially when there is no compulsion to act in accordance with the advice rendered.
The Office of the Ombudsman is not needed. It did not make an impact when it existed and it is now no longer essential. New institutional mechanisms now exist within institutions and businesses to ensure that the public is not shortchanged by administrative delays, inefficiencies or malfeasance.
The public service is no longer what it was in the past. In many countries the emphasis is less on a system of bureaucracy and more on service providers. The nature of the public service is changing; the nature of employment in the public service is changing. Workers are not as interested as thirty or forty years ago on being on the permanent establishment.
They are not putting down roots in the public service. They want to use the experience they gain in the public service to move on to other things, and they are doing so, hence the massive increase in the number of those opting for contract rather than tenured employment.
All of this makes the need for a Public Service Appellate Tribunal unnecessary. And since there has always been resort to the courts for judicial review of administrative actions, persons are more inclined to go that route rather than seek remedies through an administrative tribunal. The Public Service Appellate Tribunal should also be dumped.
Other institutions that need to be replaced are the Integrity Commission and the Ethnic Relations Commission. These institutions since their formation have had a limited impact. Their continued existence is therefore questionable.
As for the Public Procurement Commission, there is a need for our legislators to seriously examine whether, as conceived in our laws, this body is not too powerful and can end up becoming an all-powerful Leviathan.
Guyana needs new and strengthened institutions. But some need to be dumped because they are not living up to expectations, while others have outlived their usefulness.

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