We need to reassess our approach to public participation

One of the most evident principles in our Constitution is the concept of public participation. The Constitution not only prescribes it as a national value but also weaves it in every aspect of public administration. The Executive and legislatures at both levels of Government are required to engage the public in the policy and law-making processes and to involve the public when making decisions that will impact them.

The requirements for public consultation are restated in detail in various legislation, so that in the Public Finance Management Act for instance, there are specific requirement on consultation at specific times in the budget cycle and the process is institutionalised through the County budget forums. However, in most situations where citizen engagement is required, the matter is left to those in leadership to determine the mode and content of that consultation. What has resulted over time is that most processes dubbed public participation are merely tokenistic interventions where citizens opinions are purportedly sought without any serious intention to take their views into account.

At the national Government level, most so called public participation fora are colonised by the same persons and are mere talking shops where no serious interrogation of the issues at hand takes place. The only substantive public participation that occurs at the national level is stakeholder consultations where interest groups meet those in leadership to pursue specific partisan interests. This is below what the law expects of public participation.

In the counties, public participation fora are usually no different from campaign meetings, comprising partisans called primarily to rubberstamp what the county leadership has already determined to do. This unfortunate reality about the status of public participation should not surprise us. After decades of unaccountable leadership, the Constitution could not convert our leaders into listeners overnight. The most obvious evidence of this lack of commitment to public participation is the lack of investment in civic awareness. I am convinced that where any Government organ has invested zero resources whether in civic awareness, public participation is just a cruel joke. Where Government has not packaged its information in a people-friendly manner, there is really no intention to seek people’s participation. I do however think that in any event, we need to reassess our approach to public participation if it is not to end up producing immeasurable citizen skepticism.

In a country where significant resources would need to go into effective public participation, we really need to rethink our capacity to have substantive public engagement if we insist on it at all stages of our governance process. I believe that public participation resources should be invested in two main arenas. Firstly, voter education. The ultimate public participation in governance is at the poll booth to ensure that people make informed voter choices. One then assumes that the voter choice is based on a manifesto, programme of action, or a policy platform that a citizen agrees with. Once the citizen has made that choice, it is asking too much of the citizen to then assist their elected leaders to decide the policy and programme choices. There may be a place for consultation on broad policy and programme prioritisation, but even that at a macro level. Leaders must take full responsibility of leadership.

The second arena where investment should be made is in empowering the citizen to hold leadership accountable to the manner in which they are implementing the programmes they were elected to achieve. In regard to the budget for example, the responsibility of the leadership is to innovatively provide to all its citizens people friendly information on the budget choices and the manner of implementation including cost and timelines. This information is what the citizen then uses to hold their leadership accountable. The advantage of this process is that it is demand-driven and enables the citizen to assess their leadership and demand action. The current wide, but thin, tokenistic process may meet the letter of the law, but it definitely fails the law’s spirit.

-The writer is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya

Business
Premium Burdened Kenyans walk into Easter weekend broke
Business
Premium Looming crisis as top lenders stare at Sh500b in bad loans
Business
Premium Water PS Korir put on the spot over Sh14m dam land
Business
Premium Ruto's food security hopes facing storm amid fake fertiliser scam