Buddan
Robert Buddan, Contributor
MANY PEOPLE would have made their New Year's resolutions already but most resolutions are private and personal - like eating better, exercising more, spending more time with family, kicking bad habits, and so on.
We can move to a higher level to make citizenship resolutions, that is, ones that make ourselves better citizens not just better persons.
A good place to start is with the Values and Attitudes campaign scheduled to be re-launched this month. Its basic philosophy is, after all, to make ourselves good citizens. Information Minister Burchell Whiteman said that the campaign is geared towards showing how every Jamaican can build a better Jamaica. It is worthy that we join the cause for less coarseness and crudeness, improved discipline, increased respect for life and person and improved good manners.
THE VALUE OF VALUES
We cannot have a civil society with uncivil values and attitudes. We cannot have a proper democracy without civic-minded participation. We cannot respect Jamaica's goals for development without civic pride in the country. Civil society organisations alone cannot make Jamaica a civil society. Many of them are too limited in their focus, too attack-minded in their style, too class-bound in their leadership, and at any rate, too dependent for finances from organisations with their own agenda.
A national campaign adds to the development of civil society because it seeks to establish a participatory framework for all members of society, to inculcate national values and attitudes suited to Jamaica, to use governmental institutions such as the Ministry of Education to build citizenship values into our educational curriculum and spread them through the schools, and to use the resources of Government for national development rather than to alienate the state as anti-people, anti-democracy, and anti-development.
The campaign for better values and attitudes is not limited to society-state relations either. It includes relations within society itself. It is quite rightly concerned with how people conduct business and treat consumers and clients; how companies treat employees and levels of welfare and respect within them; how residents regard their communities and the kinds of bonding and sense of responsibility they show; how teachers and students treat each other, how doctors and nurses care for patients, and how members of families get along. The right values and attitudes are the foundation for everything else.
CIVIL VALUES AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Citizen's (New Year) resolutions should also resolve to engage in more community and voluntary activities. Citizens must demonstrate an ethic of social responsibility, community self-reliance, community development and conscientiousness towards the disadvantaged.
For me, the first real civil society movement in Jamaica began under Jamaica Welfare and the leadership of Norman Manley. Manley and Jamaica Welfare invented the concept of civil society in Jamaica even if they did not use the phrase. The concept goes back to the late 1930s and was important in building nationalism and the movement towards self-government.
Jamaica Welfare attempted to show that Jamaicans were capable of managing their own affairs by building development from below through community welfare organisations against a history in which the plantation society had substituted identification with estates for identification with nation; and at building self-reliance when the colonial state could not be relied upon to help Jamaicans. That movement was the basis for important aspects of social development in the early period.
CIVIL VALUES AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Citizen resolutions must also aim at building social capital by investing what we have by way of talent, cultural solidarity, trust, and national pride into the production of the material and spiritual lifestyles that we desire. It is still a popular notion that democracy strives better when economic development is taking place, the economy is growing and more people have opportunities for better incomes. This still remains true. However, a more contemporary view is that democracy and social order require a culture of civic-mindedness that supports toleration, trust, participation, pride, self-esteem and a feeling that people can make a difference to their society. This in fact is the foundation for a sound economy. It is people's values and attitudes that determine how well they work and how rightly they live their lives.
CIVIC VALUES AND POLITICS
The attitude that governments and politicians must do everything for everybody is not healthy for democracy or development. In fact, it is contrary to the view that there is too much politics in our lives and too much Government intrusion in our activities. But having less politics and less government requires having more civil society and individual responsibility. In fact, the very idea of governance is that one does not have to be in government to be a part of governance.
Governance is any organised activity, undertaken publicly or privately, that is responsible for a specific sphere or type of activity. Social governance does not seek to replace state governance but to fill in where there are gaps or voids on the basis that governments cannot do everything, do not know best how to do everything, and do not necessarily see priorities as citizens do. Social governance provides opportunities to have democracy and development that are as much society-driven as they are state-driven.
PARTICIPATION
Good citizenship requires that each person makes a commitment to be a better member of society. Citizens do not even have to join civil society groups for this. They can contribute by themselves.
People can start newsletters to inform others, report incidents of waste to public authorities, report corruption, volunteer some hours each week to do office work at their local police station, help others to fill out application forms for passports, jobs, loans, relief, give advice about setting up a small business to those with little experience and becoming small business mentors, counselling others about right and wrong and helping to settle disputes, establishing Web sites to guide people about business opportunities, and such things. In fact, in any area in which a complaint is made, a citizen can avail himself or herself to be a part of the solution.
Citizens can help to improve the political process. They can report constituency problems to their members of Parliament, help MPs to sort through letters from their constituents, investigate and respond. They can help to man and keep constituency offices open for longer hours, take phone calls, make appointments, and help in providing service. A citizen will be amazed at how much he can help and learn by providing a few hours a week in an area in which he feels comfortable and limited to what he feels he can do best.
Of course, citizens can join or establish groups to follow issues in their communities and work with the responsible authorities on matters to do with roads, water, crime, sanitation, pollution, conflict resolution, traffic, transport, job-creation, skills development, and such. Democracy works by feedback. The more the authorities know and the more support they get, the better they can and will respond. Too many people expect the authorities to see everything or expect somebody else to bring issues to attention. Taking responsibility means being a part of getting things done.
It would be a good idea for each group to create a directory of the customer offices of each public authority and to nominate a communications person who can call in and report problems and possible solutions, on behalf of the group, as soon as problems arise. The quicker a broken water pipe is reported the more money is saved. The more we report theft of electricity, pollution of drains, vandalism against public property and so on, the more quickly we can act to save money.
GOVERNMENT'S CAMPAIGN
The role of the Government is to consult, provide a structure and motivate. In the final analysis, it is up to Jamaicans to respond. For the campaign to work, the 15 per cent to 20 per cent of citizens who have a strong enough sense of responsibility to be mobilised must respond first to get others to respond. There are enough studies around the world that show that most people are at best spectators in their society rather than participants in public activity.
Also, Government must give people confidence that it will respond (even accepting that there are limits to what it can do) and show how it is responding. One of the signs of apathy and causes of cynicism is people's view that their actions will not make a difference because governments don't care and don't respond except when they want to win votes.
Government must establish and tell us what precise mechanisms are in place to hear citizen's complaints, assist in organising their response and provide for that response. The campaign cannot be just a moral call for good citizenship. It must have a realistic material basis to show results.
Robert Buddan is a lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. E-mail: rbuddan@uwimona.edu.jm
