|
Ethiopia has a rich experience in planning, including being an African
public sector investment roadmap pioneer since the
early 1950s, dubbing them, “development plans,” yet,
in the three regimes since then, development plans
have been crafted for only one purpose; pleasing
donors.
The process with which planning has been done has also varied with the
inclinations of the biggest aid giver. During the
imperial era, planning was done to please Sweden and
the United States (US). For the socialist military
dictatorship, the Russians were their Uncle Sam.
After 1991, the West, with its instrumental duos of
the World Bank(WB) and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), has been the Fairy Godmother.
Recently, the Chinese have been getting into the show, although they
have little leverage on the public sector side of
planning, with their primary focus being on joint
public and private partnership projects.
The Chinese are too poor to be as generous as the West, they know.
Hence, the show is still being run by the West with
aid inflows increasing as the West feels more and
more dubious about Somalia with each passing day and
is pleased with the achievements of the
Revolutionary Democrats, both in stabilising the
region and in enhancing economic growth.
For the past eight years, the policy-level show was all about plans
dubbed as blurry ellipses like the Sustainable
Development and Poverty Reduction Programme (SDPRP)
and the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained
Development to End Poverty (PASDEP).
Now, the rhetoric is going to be changed to the Plan for Growth and
Transformation. Yet, one thing has not been changed
since the imperial era – distorting “community
participation” for political consumption.
Empty rituals in the name of “community participation” should be
distinguished from true participation, if democracy
is to flourish, said Sherry Arnstein, in her widely
quoted 1969 article headlined, “A Ladder of Citizen
Participation,” where she portrayed the true picture
of development bureaucracy.
For Sherry, if governments, aid agencies, think thanks, trade unions,
labour organisations, and neighbourhood and youth
associations are frank about placing people at the
core of decision-making, they have to be serious.
They should take credulous steps to engage the
communities rather than just window dressing the
heart of the matter by circulating buzzwords like
“involvement,” “engagement,” “empowerment,” and
“participation.”
Sherry’s ladder of community participation has eight rungs, from
manipulation, therapy, information, consultation,
and placation to partnership, delegated power, and
citizen control. For her, it is only in cases of
partnership, delegated power, and citizen control
that there is real participation.
In all other cases, bureaucrats are just trading their own political or
corporate interests in the name of community
participation. In reality, they are distorting the
will of the people for their own interests, while
they tag the whole process as “community
participation.” For “somebodies,” like the powerful
few, the “nobodies,” the everyday citizens, do not
matter at all.
That is what is happening in this poor land of beauty and diversity,
even 19 years after the overthrow of the military
dictatorship.
As Sherry has properly put it, in the name of participation, the power
holders play a political cat and mouse game while
the have-nots continue to suffer to their death.
As an immediate result of the previous two plans in poverty reduction
efforts by the incumbent, the country witnessed
radical change in infrastructure, education, and
provision of primary healthcare and clean water. The
tremendous progress in these aspects has to be
applauded wholeheartedly.
Yet, the joy does not extend far when community participation is taken
into account. The way development projects, which
constitute these lengthily-named technocratic plans,
were evaluated has been far from reliable or
participatory. Localised politics have been
hampering the smooth implementation of development
interventions, turning the development bureaucracy
of the nation into a development adhocracy.
The contagious disease of focusing on numbers, as was the case during
the military regime, has reached down to the local
level, so that local officials value numbers rather
than people, quantity over quality, and physical
construction over community empowerment.
Why would a local government official care about quality and community
based decision-making while her immediate boss cares
only about quantity and physical achievement,
anyway? Is this not a localised version of democracy
versus economic growth debate?
With the tremendous achievements attained in the infrastructure sector
in the recent past, the voices of the “numeric
bureaucrats” have found a suitable medium. The
nation’s economy is taking off, they tell the public
time and again.
That being true, though, how far is the development planning process
participatory, in view of citizen decision-making
power? Would undertaking conferences of
politically-affiliated community representatives be
enough to make the development plans participatory?
How far could the outputs of these conferences
determine the priority areas of intervention?
If examined under the lenses of inclusiveness and participation, the
two previous plans of the incumbent could be seen as
less satisfactory, if not unsuccessful. With the
planning process narrowly scrutinised along
technocratic and political lines in the upcoming
development plan, it is dubious to what extent the
process could be reckoned as participatory. The
public has spoken by giving its valuable vote to the
Revolutionary Democrats in the May 2010 elections,
expecting an equivalent reward of equitable
development and participatory decision-making.
Passing the test would, then, require attempting each question
properly, thoughtfully, and engagingly. Settling for
less would be disastrous, both to the governing
party and the nation.
Establishing resilient democracy requires adaptable bureaucracy. This
requires having structures that can engage the weak,
the dispossessed, the impoverished, and the
marginalised in the decision-making process. For a
country like Ethiopia, where politics is dominantly
about development, establishing a participatory
development bureaucracy has to be a priority.
As a hallmark, the process of planning poverty reduction plans should
be more participatory, inclusive, community-driven,
and bottom-up. For that to hold true, Ethiopia
should stop working to please the West and strive to
embrace its public.
|
