Citizens have key role to be a check on bureaucrats

HOME > ST FORUM > ONLINE STORY
Apr 5, 2011
Citizens have key role to be a check on bureaucrats
DR VINCENT Tan states that the People's Action Party should take care of its own renewal, implying that this is also an issue other parties should face on their own as it is not the problem of the public, which simply casts its votes ("Govts better off with checks and balances"; yesterday).

It is also stated that the way to check the Government is to boot in other candidates for the sake of diversity.
This is the mindset we need to grow away from where there is bifurcation of reality in which politicians are entirely responsible for the country and citizens passively listen and then mark a ballot slip. They then also bear the consequences of that.
While a government provides national leadership and is naturally responsible for what happens in a country, citizens must also be involved in nation-building.
What we need is to engender a system of empowerment with democratic best practices. An active citizenry that is involved in the process of decision-making can be nurtured through people who volunteer and are selected to create councils that can review certain decisions made by the bureaucracy.
Citizens involved in such a process cannot be linked to political parties or grassroots organisations to maintain a broad, fair and balanced democratic base.
The problem in a developed society like Singapore is that much of the decision-making is centralised, with too much latitude given to officialdom. Many of our complaints can be followed like a thread through a labyrinth leading to the desks of data-crunching bureaucrats.
Citizens should have the power to decide and overturn by-the-book decisions made by bureaucrats which deny the appeals made by other citizens.
Other than having just voices scoring off one another in Parliament, the citizens council can also effectively - and without ideological bias - formulate policies that are submitted to the government of the day.
We need to move away from copy-cat attempts to be like states that tout themselves as democracies which either precipitate some form of political violence, or serve primarily the profit motives of the banking industry, corporate behemoths and other vested interests.
None of us is absolved from the responsibility of the choices we make. Lest there be any doubt, we are all in this together.
Sanjay Perera
http://www.straitstimes.com/ST+Forum/Online+Story/STIStory_652881.html


================