The concept of governance and its normative adjectives, such as goodness and effectiveness only emerged in the 1990s. The goodness in governance can be assessed in the context of its processes in terms of accountability and transparency, assessed in its content in terms of equity and justice and in its delivery acumen, in terms of the quality of goods and services provided for the people it serves.
In other words, good governance can be evaluated in terms of how responsibly a government manages the natural (or national) and financial resources of a country in response to the ever-changing global challenges of societies and how responsive it is to the needs of the governed in attaining sustainable socio-economic development. One may add that for a country with a high rate of poverty and on one of the last rungs of the regional poverty ladder, poverty reduction is (or should be) priority for any governance system.
However, good governance was initially not a notion in particular support of democracy and the rule of law per se but mostly as a way of enforcing a conditionality to the loans and grants given to the developing countries by the development partners.
Nonetheless, over the years, it became apparent that such conditionalities should be practical enough under the overarching values of democracy if the use of the taxpayers’ monies of the development partners is to be justified to their electorate.
Democracy is generally recognized as a political system that embraces the principles of constitutional rule, the fundamental freedoms of expression and press freedom in addition to a gamut of other human right issues. Although initially the governance concept puts emphasis of how resources are being managed, it has now become inextricably linked to the values of democracy.
Democracy has severely eroded the political power of leaders to unleash their whims and caprices on its citizens without consequences. Decades after the advent of independence in Africa, what emerged as a trend of being dictatorial or autocratic, seems to wane with the global recognition of the values of democracy as a vehicle for national progress and development. The current generation of African leaders find themselves at the threshold of the twilight of autocratic rule as a form of governance.
Thus, some African heads of state seem to be caught in between the temptations and abomination of greed through systemic corrupt practices and the struggle to gain and maintain global congenial recognition as an acceptable qualification for development partner support. One often finds the sanctimonious pronouncements of so many such leaders at global fora and stages where they gleefully present their strides in upholding democratic values whilst on the home front, they glaringly demonstrate an air of intolerance and abuse of the same values. The media is always a common victim of being caught in between such two dispositions.
What generally stands out is the pattern of media confrontation in two aspects – an evolutionary habit of using undemocratic laws of defamation and all-embracing false publication and security laws at home to stifle dissent and to induce intimidation whilst at the same time trying to project an image of upholding democratic values on the international stage. It is a matter of trying to maintain a schizophrenic or two contradictory images on two fronts – one for the home front with intimidation and the other a lip service to democratic values for the global image. To genuinely uphold the latter, the tools of intimidation embedded in such laws must be repealed.
In Africa, it is of paramount importance for the remnants of the twilight autocrats to enforce systemic changes to inherited modes of undemocratic governance of the past by promoting competence in the performance of institutions and their processes, abolishing corruption in the performance of such institutions, being empathetic and compassionate to the plight of the governed and providing an equitable distribution of the national wealth within an effective delivery system. This can only be attained through an institutional environment of transparency and accountability under the watchful eyes of a free and independent media as the fifth estate.
Press freedom is synonymous to freedom of speech which is important to a truly democratic dispensation. It is embodied under the cloak of human rights which is a globally recognised characteristic of good governance and democracy. It has international jurisdiction.
The current concern by the media fraternity on the arrest of some journalists is not a new trend in the history of democracy in the Gambia. The intensity and frequency may vary but the rules have always been the same. The draconian laws since the 1994 era are still the same.
It will be interesting for the Gambia in particular and the international community in general, to see how the two opposing dispositions are reconciled by the relevant institution(s) of the State responsible for the arrest and the charging of the journalists – one that upholds and presents the democratic demeanor of its head of state in the presence of his peers at the UN or one that upholds and proceeds with implementing the questionable expansive laws of false publication which are a subject of recommendations for repeal by the regional court of justice and the local TRRC. In other words, and under the circumstances, will the arrested journalists continue to be indeed prosecuted?
On the other hand, maintaining the same rules inherited from an autocratic governance system is difficult to justify as a democratic disposition even where the frequency and method of application of such inimical laws are comparatively less severe than a previous dispensation of autocratic rule.
The art of governance has an inherent aspect of goodness and diplomatic outlook which cannot be expressed nor globally accepted by applying the same rules of a questionable system of rule and laws that are generally considered to be inimical to a democratic dispensation.
Just Thinking Aloud
