Representing the People or Sitting for Allowances

You might know the problem. Your organisation wants to offer a workshop for parliamentarians. But then the representatives of the people prove to be rather elusive. And when you finally seem to get them to attend your particular workshop on media or other matters, they also prove expensive. “Per diem” is the word. It sounds Latin and holy, but it is Zimbabwean or Zambian and means – “we want to get additional money on top of our salaries to serve ourselves in the name of the people”.

Where does that leave you and your development organisation?

Here you have two alternatives: Either you are telling those members of certain parliamentary committees that the building of their capacity should serve their function as competent members of the legislature and not fill their pockets. If you do that you will make them angry and go away to greener pastures provided by other donors who prefer to pamper parliamentarians at the cost of ignoring the basic tenets of parliamentary democracy; donors who would rather pay 150 Dollars a day than cancel their workshop and explain that very fact honestly in their yearly report.

Or you pay the generous “per diems” which those other donors offer in the particular development market you happen to work in.

What do you do?

You can – and should – loudly complain to the representatives of the people about their lack of principle and the misunderstanding of their role.

But then you should also complain about the same phenomena among donors.  If those international organisations preach democracy to only practice competitive, capitalist capacity building, they are equally unprincipled and ignorant of the democratic context of their work.

You don’t strengthen good governance by feeding the voracious appetite of those parliamentarians who are not so much representing the people than sitting for allowances.

-November 2, 2009 by Rolf Paasch fesmedia Africa