An open letter to the 2016 political hopeful

By Naomi Kabarungi-Wabyona

Dear Candidate,

The year 2015 has started with hefty promises from political hopefuls, being the determining year of whether we vote you into office come 2016. Social media is already awash with your manifestos in bold print and full colour.

This is very fundamental for democracy: No election would be worth its name without a variety of choices and what better way to choose than to look at and compare the options for leadership!

As 2015 progresses, we are prepared for more bombarding in the mainstream media and littering on our streets with your pictures on larger-than-life posters and paper flyers, without any regard for our otherwise beautiful environment.

What I find disheartening, however, is that amidst this political hullabaloo, a critical component of democracy has been left out: citizen empowerment.

I spent a greater part of my work-time in 2014 visiting 125 sub-counties in 20 select districts across Uganda, to encourage citizens to take part in building democracy. Under our citizens’ campaign “Get Involved”, we engaged communities in conversations about their constitutional rights and obligations towards ensuring quality service delivery.

Using simply illustrated information materials, we taught citizens about the mandated roles of their elected local councillors as opposed to the community expectations of money and alcohol; the obligation of citizens to elect leaders that would represent them efficiently; the duty of citizens as voters to hold their leaders accountable and their right to demand for the expected standard in availability, quality, quantity and timeliness of public services.

One of our discoveries from this exercise was that the efforts of the Government to improve service delivery count to naught, if citizens are not participating in the governance of their communities. Take for example, primary education: despite the marvelous reviews of the Universal Primary Education policy, rural schools continue to fail at PLE because of reasons including teacher absenteeism, inadequate school facilities and crowded classrooms [if any].

Interacting with the citizens in community meetings, we understood that these problems were a consequence of underlying issues arising from citizens’ perceptions of what public services should offer.

One is the laid-back-recipient attitude that citizens have adopted: parents did neither support nor follow-up the conditions and performance of the schools because they did not appreciate the need for their contribution, say through providing lunch and other basic needs for their children; after all, they argued, these are “Museveni’s schools and children”.

The other issue is the citizens’ ignorance of their right to hold leaders accountable; many participants expressed timidity to confront their district councilors concerning service delivery issues, because they considered the politicians ‘untouchable’.

Despite these issues however, we learnt from the positive response of citizens to campaigns like this that there is among the local citizenry [peasants] a renewed hunger for information on governance and democracy.

While citizens did not fully understand the channels of accountability, they demanded to know: “why did we vote?!” They complained of political leaders that never return and of broken bridges and roads that have not seen repairs for the entire political term. Thus, citizens are aware that if public services are dismal in their community, the person to blame is their elected leader.

Analysing this trend may help you pitch your manifesto better. Citizens may not have fully comprehended it yet, but they are increasingly aware that democracy is theirs to build and its benefits theirs to enjoy.

There will be no better strategy to amass political support than by engaging citizens to understand their power in a democracy through civic education and empowerment.

The writer is a research officer at the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment