Delivery gap and super politician

NATION

By FRANK SENGE KOLMA
[email protected]

TO answer this question above, we must ask a couple more.
What is the purpose of putting a politician, whether a national MP or otherwise, at different levels of government at all? Or put differently: What is the job of a politician?
The job should dictate where the politician is placed to reap the best possible outcomes. The job of a politician is ill-defined in PNG and across the years the attached duties, roles and responsibilities have become increasingly unclear and muddled up.
It has been a practice, indeed it is the only practice in vogue today, that politicians see themselves as representing their people to the National Parliament in order to “take from and bring back to” their people goods and services. The people, in urgent need of the most basic needs of society, also see the politician’s role under this narrow light.
Parliament and especially executive government becomes a sort of ‘goods and services’ or ‘money’ basket or market, to put this simplistically, that the Member must muscle his way through to grab a bagful of roads, bridges, jetties, airstrips and schools and hospitals or the money for them anyway and take his haul back to his voters. (For gender-sensitive persons please read references to one gender, ‘his’ as including ‘hers’ and vice versa. I use only one or the other gender interchangeably in my writing to represent the both for ease of reading only).
In such a scenario then how the ‘haul’ is performed, i.e if it were done in a corrupt manner, is of little consequence to the beneficiaries, the people. They have got what they want, they want more and the person who has performed the feat is the local hero. He has done what is expected of him and they will send him back again and again for the same. It is easy to see how people can easily become blind to corruption and corruptive enterprise given such a mentality.
In such a scenario a successful operator on the national scene would be encouraged and he would be encouraged himself to continue his legacy at the provincial and the local level government sector as well because there are goods and services to be collected at each level of government for delivery.
Political competition intrudes and encourages the drive by MPs to attend at each level of government. To have too many attempting the delivery job at different levels provides competition and competition often leads to rivalry that can lead ultimately to early political graves, an end to be avoided at all costs.
The move that began in the 80s and the early 90s leading to the provincial government reforms of 1995 has its genesis in the competition between provincial and national politicians. The provincial politicians were closer to the people and the Organic Law placed almost equal powers to that of the national MP in the hands of the Member of Provincial Assembly. That created tension and competition which led to many provincial members making successful bids to enter Parliament from a short stint in the provincial assembly.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using national MPs at multiple levels of government in Papua New Guinea today?

The angst that developed led to the creation of a provincial government that had no separate elective representatives or much legislative powers and is only represented by national MPs and Presidents of local level governments and a sprinkling of nominated members representing business, churches and women.
So was removed the elected Provincial Government Member but the elected President of the Local Level Government quickly moved into and filled the void left by the Provincial Member. As the president is now effectively an elected member at two levels of government as is the national MP, he is seen to wield much power. The LLG president can see his way clear all the way to Parliament and has begun agitating in that direction.
What to do? The introduction of the district development authority in 2014 produced the Member of Parliament back at the district level, to make his presence felt, in case the President played too much mischief. The Member of Parliament now has a significant presence at all three levels of Government and most importantly he heads an authority at the level of the district, his base, which is a goods and services delivery vehicle. The MP can now be seen clearly at work by his people delivering goods and services as Chair of the DDA.
This explanation then produces a rationale for why the national MP is to be found at all the three levels of Government today.
Now let us examine the politician from another perspective, from that of a politician’s job in the traditional sense.
If the job of the politician is to make laws and policies for the welfare, security and upkeep of his community and the nation, then we see a quite different scenario emerging.
We see the politician as a law maker in the national legislature (Parliament), as a policy maker in the National Executive Council (Cabinet) and as providing oversight and accountability in Parliamentary Committees.
He has no role at all and is not required to deliver goods and services. That is the job of the huge public service machinery which primary task it is to draw up programs and delivery projects in answer to the dictates of Government policy and budget priorities.
On top of making laws and policies and providing oversight to ensure probity, transparency and accountability in the operation of government and as an aside, the MP may bring, from time to time, direct to Parliament (through question time) and the Cabinet (through letters and submissions) such issues of development concern from his district and people as the case might be and lays it at the foot of the Executive Government. The Government gathers these concerns and requests including those brought in by civil servants posted to each district, looks at the total need of the country, looks at the budget available and then directs programs and projects and the use of monies under programs and projects in line with its policy priorities.
Since the MP is not directing goods and services delivery and he is not in charge of the budget or the implementation mechanism, he is not required at any other level of Government than at the top level to pass laws and ensure their implementation.
Laws and policies made at the national level are applicable across the nation and therefore it is a sheer waste of time for national politicians to be engaged at both of the lower levels of government.
Goods and services delivery, applying this process, is a slow and labyrinthine process and a district can wait a full term of Parliament or two without seeing any movement on some urgent road, schools or health project it might have requested through its MP. The pressures that build up here will often lead to the MP being voted out of office at the next elections. The politician, who is charged with the people’s request, appreciates that. The civil servant, who is charged with delivering on the request, does not or does not care.
Politicians have a statutory time limit of five years on their jobs before they are called to account by the people at elections but the public servants have no such lookout and are secure in their jobs up to their 60th birthday when the law requires them to retire.
The insecurity of the Politician in his job and the security of the Civil Servant in his has led to the first changing his job description and concocting such legal devices as he deems sufficient to circumvent or even do the job of the second.
This and competition provided by competing political forces at different levels of government has led to the national politician filtering downwards to the provincial and local levels.
This he is able to because he has it within his power to do so by the mere act of enacting laws in Parliament to allow him to do so.
So what are the advantages and disadvantages of using national MPs at multiple levels of government in Papua New Guinea today?
The answer is that it is advantageous for both the people, in their current estimation, and the politician in his current position, to occupy all three structures of Government.
Is this correct? Can this situation lead to true and lasting development?
The answer will be different from different viewpoints.
To this writer, having national politicians occupy more than one level of government is unnecessary, costly and basically wrong.
It suggests to me double dipping – for instance, a Governor who is paid by Parliament but who runs the Provincial Government budget and has access to all perks and privileges available at both.
An MP who is paid by the National Parliament gets to chair his own District Development Authority and authorize all procurements of goods and services including getting involved in businesses and other enterprises that the DDA is authorized to be involved in.
But the situation has developed because there has developed a delivery gap across the years.
A country so filthy rich is so desperately poor in terms of its socio-economic indicators, in terms of its corruption index, its credit rating, in terms of poor development of basic infrastructure and poor performance in other measurements of a growing, prospering nation that beggars description.
In such a void has emerged the super-politician who occupies all strata of politics and who has taken upon himself the development burdens of the country when he is ill suited to the task, when he is under resourced and without a proper administrative structure to deliver properly or sustainably.
His effectiveness is already minimal and the future of such an enterprise uncertain for there has emerged no structure to sustain it, it duplicates the work of the public service and the public service just cannot be made to disappear.
The politician is attempting somebody else’s job and must be made to see his way clear to his job and to do his job.

Next: Division of legislative and executive power, fragmented funding arrangements and how division of powers affect quality of governance and services delivery.