8/6/2019 AIP Headlines: FINANCIAL MATTERS: The choices before our new democracy

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AIP Headlines: FINANCIAL MATTERS: The choices before our new democracy

By: Ifeanyi Uddin

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5698561-146/financial_matters_the_choices_before_our.csp

I readily confess to a fascination with the theory of unintended consequences. But, a small clarification before anything further is written. My interest is not in the certainty that everything that may go wrong about a policy choice/decisionis bound to. Confronted by almost six decades of inept and often cynical management of this economy, it is to be expected that we have come to associate unintended consequences with negative outcomes.In truth, put this way, my central narrative is but a variant of Murphys Law. Instead, my enthralment is with the benefits, losses, or wrong signals arising froma particular action, but which were not conceived of in or intended as part ofthe original action plan.Newspaper headlines on workers day, May 1, were all of one flavour. In their addr

esses to the different labour rallies, state governors all pledged to implementthe new minimum wage. Not too long ago, the same persons had argued that their state government budgets could not bear the extra financial burden from paying the new minimum wage. What had changed since then? I could think of only one proximate explanation: the events of late April, this year.On balance, the last polls in the country appear to have moved the social engagement envelope several notches up. The voice of the people was heard loud and clear, amidst the din of many a strong mans battered ego. That was the intended consequence of the clamour over the years for a democracy in which every vote is counted, and every vote counts.To the extent that it acts as counter-weight to the dominant culture of impunitythat has come to define our polity, a representative democracy ought to improveboth the collective capacity to choose, and the different cabinets will to execu

te.Perverse resultsHowever, to the extent that politicians interpret re-election as the main challenge of a democracy, then even the best voting process could have perverse results.One such result is the rise of populist politics. Because the masses may now have the power of the vote, what is to stop unscrupulous politicians from pandering to its basest instincts? To take but a few examples, a thin line separates theneed for higher taxes on the affluent in aid of societys redistribution responsibilities from a restraint on commerce as part of an ill-advised process of democratising poverty; a no less blurred space sits between the need to protect employment for locals and xenophobia.A less than honest treatment of the policy choices at the heart of these two exa

mples could lead politicians in a race to the bottom of the dump yard; more so in a democracy where people have only just begun to savour the power that rightfully belongs to them. Our best bet is a lot more conviction at the top. For leadership is not solely about bending resources and capacity to the discharge of thepopular will. It is more about shaping the choice space. Agreeing a desired destination, and selling this to the electorate. It is, in this very narrow sense,a question ultimately of shaping the popular will. Of leading it down paths where only visionaries have travelled previously.Again as between a visionary leader and a demagogue, the thinnest of lines demarcate. So we arrive at the point where we must agree that even under the best ofrepresentative democracies, the threat of continued misrule in this country doesnot evaporate overnight. This danger is heightened by the prevalent low levelsof education in the country, both of the classroom variety, and of the civic one

, which can only come from a long thriving civil society.In the absence of such a society, then, our hopes for a better tomorrow, in theshort-term, at least still depend on the quality of leadership we get. In the ab

8/6/2019 AIP Headlines: FINANCIAL MATTERS: The choices before our new democracy

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