Daily Times

Am I the only one who sifts through the paper avoiding the Panama case update? The issue is a fundamental one of transparency and accountability; both of which are not being focused. Political point scoring has its own merits but, frankly, it has increased to border line toxicity.

In other news, something significant has occurred at the Finance Ministry. A kind of “one small step for Dar, giant leap for us”. If you were to ask me to summarise different mechanisms of effective governance that is citizen centric, responsive towards evolving social, political and economic realities, and clubbed with a robust and inclusive built-in monitoring and partnership with all key stakeholders, which include governments, civil society, private sector; how would I do it? With three keywords. Open Government Partnership.

It started with five countries and has now evolved to seventy-four with Pakistan being the 74th country to hopefully become a member. Last November, we expressed our membership intent through a letter penned by the Finance Minister, Ishaq Dar. Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a one-stop window for digitalization of records, sustainable development, millennium goals, and human rights target (to name a few). In short, it provides a holistic mechanism for all involved stakeholders to ensure transparent, citizen-focused development and governance.

The beauty of this international mechanism is that it is based on local needs and priorities. Countries become members and while the international members might facilitate and share best practices, the bulk of the planning is done locally by the member country and its citizens. After six months of attaining OGP membership, a plan of action is developed by the country, which all local stakeholders have to then implement in a unique public-private- government-civil society partnership.

The strength of any democracy can be best judged by the recognition and implementation of the principles of transparency, good governance and accountability. These principles also form the basis of sustainable development for any country. Similarly, these principles also play a crucial role in making governments more citizens’ responsive and, as a result, their role in decision making processes increases, thus, increasing the government’s credibility among citizens.

The basic four principles in the OGP charter are fiscal transparency, access to information, asset disclosures and citizens engagement. You cannot move forward if your country action plan is not in sync with these principles. In other words, no dilly dallying on pro-active disclosure of budget heads and allocations; no hiding behind fig leaves of national interest and secrets; no letters of local or foreign origin. The principles of openness, citizens engagements, transparency and accountability are fundamental not only to the planning stage but even at the action stage.

In Pakistan, the concept of accountability to the citizens only exists on the paper. There has been no instance in the recent past when a public representative has resigned upon failure to perform his duties. However, now, the government and its representatives will have to prove that a system of accountability exists in the country and the public representatives are answerable to the citizens.

The government must realise that the membership of this multilateral forum presents a great window of opportunity for it to include the opposition, the private sector, the civil society and citizens in the decision-making process. By doing so, the government can show the world that it believes in inclusivity. By including all the stakeholders in the decision-making process, the government will benefit from their points of view and as a result, there will be a lot of improvement in the overall policy framework and implementation.

The government has also introduced laws to improve the access to information for the public. However, due to faulty procedures and bureaucratic hurdles, the implementation has been very poor. Similarly, there has been a lot of criticism on the cyber-crime law introduced by the government. The civil society believes that the law has been approved in haste with no or very little input from its side. Once again, this OGP membership provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to the government to invite the civil society to the discussion table and answer its concerns on the various laws that are being criticised for being too harsh or not too inclusive.

Similarly, the government also needs to invite the private sector, the chambers of commerce and industries and the various other sectors that play a crucial rule in the national development on the discussion table to include their points of view in the National Action Plan to be presented in the OGP summit next year.

Although, according to the government’s claim, the National Action Plan presented in OGP summit this year was prepared in consultation with the civil society, but there is little proof to support this claim.

A number of remarkable success stories have surfaced from countries as a result of greater coordination between the parliaments and civil society organisations in the various countries. Mexico is one of the first countries to form a formal alliance of congress with civil society to promote greater dialogue and discussion of commitments for greater legislative openness. The sharing of experiences of many member countries resulted in the passage of an access to information law in Paraguay in 2014. Similarly, the National Assembly of Costa Rica has worked with the civil society to launch a legislative action plan. In Georgia, the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information has worked on a National Action Plan in consultation with the Georgian Parliament. There are many other such examples which highlight the effectiveness of this multilateral forum.

Am I gushing too much about the OGP? Is my jaded reader rolling his/her eyes yet? Did you read similar articles about Millennium or Sustainable Development Goals? Perhaps, OGP will end with a whimper too. Who knows? However, our task is to hope and try to part of the path towards solutions not just be armchair cynics. It is better to have tried and failed and all that jazz.

The writer is the Executive Director of Individualland Pakistan and can be reached at info@individualland.com