Government shouldn't worry about civil society – just let them be

 In Summary

• The fact that democracy is the rule of the majority does not necessarily mean the majority is always right. 
• As a good judge told me recently, the limit of the politician is his or her own imagination, but the limit of the courts is the law.
• CSOs are like pimples on the government’s face. They are constantly accusing the government, or correcting the government, or simply doing what the government should be doing.

By LUIS FRANCESCHI
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In democratic governments there is fun, colour, noise, variety and a certain degree of disorder. No democracy has ever produced those perfect army parades of the defunct USSR or the still very much living North Korea.

Democracy goes hand in hand with society, for in the end it is the rule of the majority. George Bernard Shaw said “democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve”.

It is precisely this capacity to choose, this annoying equality at the ballot box, that makes democracy so attractive to modern society.

Abraham Lincoln immortalised this desire for equality when he said, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”

DEMOCRACY AND FOOLISHNESS

The fact that democracy is the rule of the majority does not necessarily mean the majority is always right.

If a hundred fools are asked to make a decision, the fact that they decide by majority vote does not necessarily make their decision wise.

On the contrary, it could turn out to be a big foolishness.

This is why democracy needs certain parameters that escape a majority vote, parameters such as education, which sustains democracy and guarantees the wisdom of the majority.

READ: NGOs fault foreign funding rule

READ: Civil society says it is being targeted for ‘refusing to conform’

READ: MAKOKHA: Shut down all the NGOs, Kenyans have become rich

This education goes beyond the classroom. It is something deeper. It begins at home, continues in the street and ends in the grave.

Education impacts on peoples and institutions. Even the government, composed of an amazing variety of cultures and different backgrounds, must be educated, for democracy without education is just a conglomerate of fools.

While government runs the schooling system and educates the upcoming generations, the big question is who educates the government in a democratic system. Who corrects the government?

CORRECTING A GOVERNMENT

There are four ways of correcting the government in a democratic system, and the media catalyses them all. These four ways are often annoying and irritating for the government but it must bear with them, for this is part of democracy.

The first way is the most traumatic of them all: the ballot box. This is a huge, final and often late correction, where people tell the government, “You did not perform”, before proceeding to change it.

The second way is through the opposition, which is an essential part of democracy. Without opposition there is no democracy, and without good opposition there is no good democracy.

It is in the interest of the government to listen to the opposition and to ponder when to agree or disagree.

TOUGH TO SWALLOW

There is nothing more damaging to governance in a democratic system than preconceived disagreements, where we disagree based not on what was said, but on who said it.

The Judiciary exercises the third uncomfortable and most unpredictable way. As a good judge told me recently, the limit of the politician is his or her own imagination, but the limit of the courts is the law.

Judicial actions are tough-to-swallow warnings and corrections, where courts tell government or its political actors that something was badly or wrongly done.

The fourth and most subtle way is the most unexpected, and perhaps most annoying of them all. It is like those irritating pimples that suddenly make a beautiful political project look ugly.

This way is exercised by the Civil Society Organisations, or simply CSOs.

CIVIL SOCIETY ‘PIMPLES’

CSOs are a relatively new phenomenon in the modern world. They are usually conceived to patch up areas that the government is not managing or reaching.

CSOs are like pimples on the government’s face. They are constantly accusing the government, or correcting the government, or simply doing what the government should be doing.

CSOs may be classified into passive and active. Passive CSOs focus on reporting. These are watchdogs and observers. They usually speak of what is wrong and why.

Active CSOs focus on doing. They build, they save, they drill and they plan.

Certainly, some CSOs may have overstepped their mandate and let themselves be unduly influenced by foreign agendas or purely greed, which always happens to a percentage of corporations, whether for profit or charity.

WHERE GOVERNMENT IS STRUGGLING

But this does not make CSOs irrelevant or ‘conspiratorial’. 

CSOs are often the conscience of governance and governments. They spot problems, mistakes and corruption, and governments need to listen to them and draw their own conclusions.

In imperfect democracies where the government is struggling, CSOs are many; the pimples are countless.

A good government, like a good doctor, focuses on the important issues: the vital signs of the economy, the bigger picture. The pimples and nails are of no immediate relevance.

It is surprising that a government-sponsored amendment to the Public Benefits Organizations Act of 2013 should seek to limit the funding of NGOs, which include CSOs, to a maximum of 15 per cent.

NGOs A NECESSARY EVIL

Yet any economy that is struggling to grow, where a huge percentage of tax revenue goes into recurrent expenditure, should be desperately seeking alternative funding.

It is even more important to consider the ripple effects that such a change in law can cause to the 200,000 people employed by the NGO sector, without counting the many more who benefit from the good work of good NGOs and CSOs in the country.

CSOs' voices, complaints, hard truth and mistakes are the thermometer of democracy, pointing out where governance is failing. They also fill the gaps lefts by bad governance, inefficiency, theft, corruption, or simply poverty.

PERFUNCTORY ELECTIONS

The government shouldn't worry. Let them be,  leave them free, and plug your ears to the ground. When civil society sounds the alarm, there is something happening.

There is also a great responsibility for CSOs not to allow themselves to be misused or misdirected by greed, or a warped foreign agenda.

CSOs may be annoying little pimples, but they are the conscience of a democratic government. Once the conscience is silenced, democracy is dead.

The next step would be to subdue the Judiciary, then the opposition, until even elections will become a perfunctory exercise of premeditated results.

And when this happens, Oscar Wilde says, "democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."

Dr Franceschi is the dean of Strathmore Law School. Lfranceschi@strathmore.edu, Twitter: @lgfranceschi