Political Science

It is important to note that the cause of democracy, the provision of equal rights for all, and allowing the citizen to realize happiness and fulfillment, forms the very reasons that should declare any government or regime legitimate. A government that does not aim at ensuring that these values become a reality does not effulge the will of the people and as such, should not exist. Your Excellency, it is therefore important of you and your office to note that the onus is on your side to champion for the existence of these sacrosanct values.

It is important of you to make steps to secure the prospects of democracy that has seen you being elected into the highest office in the land, by reviewing the constitution that reflects democratic ideals. It is important that this constitution makes provision for the Doctrine of Separation of Powers.   This principle requires of the judiciary, the legislature and the executive to be independent of one another. This will abate future cases of the head of state interfering with the judiciary and the legislature.  The danger of failing to make these arms of the governments being autonomous from one another is vividly epitomized in cases unique to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) whereby the Chief Justice has at some point been made to swear in an illegitimate presidential candidate (normally an outgoing head of state), after bungled election results. In some cases, the executive has been seen to bribe, or through political patronage, coerce the legislature to pass dubious bills.

Similarly, it is important that this constitution ought to safeguard the sanctity of Universal Suffrage. This doctrine stipulates that every person has the right to vote into power, his or her candidate of choice. At the same time, this principle ensures that the government that exists is really a representative of the will of the citizen, courtesy of the fact that it is from the people. It is only when the government is directly from the people that it can be said to be the government of the people, for the people and by the people.

Your Excellency, the cause of this country’s democracy also beseeches you and your office to ensure that your legacy and term bequeath the populace with a constitution which acknowledges the Devolution of Power. The devolution of power ensures that political power is devolved to the legislature and the judiciary so that the threshold for the executive and the chief executive to abuse this political power are attenuated. It is the failure to institute this measure constitutionally that, in the LDCs as fledgling democracies; the presidency is seen as a conduit through which his cronies, protégés, region and kinsfolk can appropriate state economic values. This is because, normally, so much power is vested on the executive so that the judiciary and the legislature remain totally ancillary to the executive. This robs the judiciary and the legislature the power and chance to question the head of the legislature.    It is no wonder that in the LDCs, the presidency, and any affiliation to it is highly associated with acquisition of wealth. The pitfalls of vesting too much power on one office is best exemplified by the maxim: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

A country that claims to be democratic must sanction human rights, civic liberty and freedom. It is therefore important that measures be made so that freedom and rights for all be upheld. This means that it is needful that measures that promote the right to speak, mingle, associate, affiliate and to own personal wealth must be promoted.  The extension of this provision is that the citizen of this state, irrespective of economic status, sex, color and race must be accorded with equal chances to develop and realize self actualization. It is on this backdrop that in order to ensure that the cause of equality is enhanced, the government must adopt the concept and practice of meritocracy. This demands that in according the population with competitive services such as jobs, it is needful that the yardstick to be used in the recruitment exercise must be based on merits, and not on kinship acquaintances, nepotism, cronyism or tribalism. This measure is to help the country realize professional expertise and skills, and hence increasing huge and skilled productivity.

It is also important to note that the concept of Checks and Balance be safeguarded in this constitution. This measure rules that there always be measures, policies and institutions that check against political and professional excesses of any respective institution. It is in this effect that the legislature is always seen as a check against the excesses of the executive and the judiciary. Most importantly, it is needful that the cause of the public watchdog be upheld, since the public watchdog checks all the three arms of the government against excesses. This assuages the danger of a moribund or inept legislature that has decided to make a liaison with the government, and therefore not questioning it. To this end, it is important that civic bodies, human rights societies, interests groups, lobbyists, pressure groups and political parties be left to remain prolifically extant. As a matter of fact, Mainwaring and Scully (2008) point out at the failure to safeguard the place of these civic societies and to protect the whistleblower as one of the characteristics of totalitarian regimes.

As an extension of the above provision, it is necessary of the government to create felicity conditions for non governmental auditing and accounting firms to thrive. The positive economic prospects that this measure will bequeath the population is that it will easily and effectively aid in detecting corruption of public and non public coffers in the corporate and business sectors. It is this endemic corruption that is normally said to be bedfellows with the perennial problem of poverty. In LDCs that are trying to wade through the enchanted waters of corruption of financial nature, renowned auditing firms such as Price Water Coopers, Price Water House and Deloitte and Touché are being seen to be in high operation.  This means that the concept of Checks and Balance unlike others, is so pervasive, existing in both political and economic fronts.

On an economic front, it is important to note that the economic framework that previous regimes adopted to use as the ideological framework for this nation was not feasible. Your Excellency, take note of the fact that adopting either capitalism or socialism in pure sense is tantamount to taking this country further down an economically primrose path. It is therefore required of you to use your politico- economic acumen to carefully tamper aspects of capitalism with socialism. To this end, it is important that the government maintains a laissez faire conditions for businesses and corporate organizations to thrive and compete. This may demand of the government to provide farmers and traders with commercial incentives such as insurance, banking, good transport, communication and physical infrastructure, and the accordance of subsidized rates of expenses and taxation.

Still on the local front, it is meaningful that the state makes provision for social amenities and some of the human basic needs at subsidized rates or freely, in order to sustain the economy during crises. The fact that leading economies and democracies such as America, Britain, Canada and Switzerland among others, offer food stamps, free and/ or subsidized education and healthcare services, demands a re-visitation of the breakneck adoption of pure capitalism.

As far as bilateral and multilateral trade is concerned, it is incumbent upon you and the government to tread carefully on free market capitalism. This is not so much as to mean that the country should disband altogether, free market economy. However, it is helpful to note that though the World Trade Organization (WTO) DOHA proscribed the exaction of tariffs in the international markets and the accordance of subsidies to farmers and traders, LDCs cannot proceed without these provisions.

This therefore requires you to seize the upcoming post DOHA reconstruction to explain that since yours is a small country whose mainstay is small- scaled agriculture and economics, the farmers and traders thereof are not able to do without government subsidies. In this post DOHA reconstruction, you must remind the movers and the shakers of the conference that the only way in which your country, a politico- economic youngling can earn the much needed foreign currency is through the exaction of tariffs on foreign merchandise. Elucidate to these developed nations that theirs is a population that is affluent enough to make an abnegation of tariffs in international trade, while yours is not.

Reference

Mainwaring, Scott and Scully, Timothy. “Latin America: Eight Lessons for

            Governance,” Journal of Democracy. No. 19:3. 2008.

            http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/toc/jod.19.3.html