Applying People Power on Public Choice -Part 2/2

The broader issue affecting us is, we are easily taken in by decisions made on a piecemeal basis and out of expediencies. We are influenced by `the acting’ of politicians. We are seduced by form rather than with substance. Hence Najib’s brief visit in Keningau Sabah to a celebrated hovel of a dwelling made people jump up and down in joyous rapture forgetting the longer term solution to lousy housing does not come with Najib's brief  visit and acting out as a super duper concerned leader- but with a comprehensive housing plan. Where is it? 

Its not there -because he didn’t come to Keningau to offer long term solutions that people want. He went then to offer expedient solutions that underscore his self-interest.

The people in Pangsa Keramat live in one room flats with 7 children. The smell of broken sewers permeates the atmosphere if you walk along the back lanes. I know because I did a ceramah session there recently. Males and females sleeping together in the living room. Children spending time mostly outside and getting into drug addictions. Probably there are also unreported cases of incest. No wonder, the Pangsa Keramat is known derisively as Columbia Flats after drug notorious Columbia in South America. 

In Penang, a more comprehensive housing plan for the public is implemented where flats styled after Singapore’s respectable HDB housing are being constructed. Don’t tell this to the Singapore-phobia UMNO people- because anything that smells Singapore are vehemently rejected. 

We can’t rely on the voting system alone to elect who we think are good leaders. The leaders are all motivated by personal motivations. We can improve the efficacy and relevance of public choices by demanding and insisting the setting up of institutions and their strict adherence. 

If we have tender system which is institutionalized, we demand the strict adherence to the rules and regulations therein. If we don’t, then the leader whom we elect and whom we think is pristine can temper with the rules and regulations. Discretionary adherence leads to manipulations and compromises. In the case of the Ampang LRT and Sungai Buloh- Kajang MRT, if those business persons closely related to the PM- we don’t care if they are his golfing buddies or charkuat partners- if they don’t qualify to the terms and conditions of the tender process- we shut them out! Because that is demanded by the strict adherence to the system and institutionalized rules. 

In other words, we must strengthen the voting process by insisting strict adherence to rules and regulations. Rules and regulations are safeguarded and made stable by a system consisting of institutions.  Why? Because as is common, voters in democratic elections will tend to be poorly informed about the candidates and issues on the ballot. And they are not overly motivated to find out the truth. But their ignorance is rational because the cost of gathering information about an upcoming election and on the candidates is high relative to the benefits of voting. Why should a voter bother to become informed if his vote has a very small chance of being decisive? People vote because it is a low-cost way to express their preferences. 

So because of that, we come back to our insistence that we value a system more than the lone snake-oil peddler. 

Thus one key conclusion of public choice is that changing the identities of the people who hold public office will not produce major changes in policy outcomes. Electing better people will not, by itself, lead to much better government. Adopting the assumption that all individuals, be they voters or politicians,  are motivated more by self-interest than by public interest forces us to look closer at the problems of democratic governance. We must now recognize that because men are not angels we must stress and insist on the importance of the institutional rules under which people pursue their own objectives.

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself” 

( James Madison- The Federalist Papers, no. 51).