Garvin Heer­ah

hel­loheer­ah@gmail.com

So I had the won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty as a young boy grow­ing up, to spend hol­i­days (Au­gust Hol­i­days) and not Sum­mer Hol­i­days (as it is be­ing called to­day) with my grand­fa­ther or more so my grand un­cle on the By­pass, Ari­ma.

Grow­ing up with Dad­dy Paul (Mr Paul Matthews) as many would have known and called him in Ari­ma and its en­vi­rons was al­ways an ad­ven­ture and a time in my life and my broth­er’s as tru­ly mem­o­rable.

Dad­dy Paul was a car­pen­ter/wood­work spe­cial­ist by trade. He was fa­mous in the old days for mak­ing coffins for all of the fu­ner­al homes in Ari­ma and cer­tain parts of the East/West cor­ri­dor. When he re­tired from that trade, he took to farm­ing and pig rear­ing to pass his time. Al­though pigs were his prime live­stock, he did own a cou­ple of goats and cows too, but hogs were his main fo­cus.

He was mar­ried at one time to my great aunt, Aun­tie Mil­lie. But hard­ly any­one called her Mil­lie; she was com­mon­ly known in the vil­lage as Cow Mam­my. Be­cause she took care of the cows, grew at­tached to them, and was re­al­ly de­vot­ed to her du­ties. Cow Mam­my lived in low­er Ari­ma, Churchill Cir­cu­lar to be ex­act. When she and Dad­dy Paul part­ed ways, she re­mained in low­er Ari­ma and he re­treat­ed to the By­pass Road, Ari­ma.

As a fam­i­ly, we would lat­er move to the By­pass in Ari­ma when we all left Care­nage as chil­dren with our dad.

But dur­ing my hol­i­days, one of the most cher­ished mem­o­ries of stay­ing up with Dad­dy Paul on the farm was ac­com­pa­ny­ing him through­out the length and breadth of the land and help­ing him fix the fences. He was ded­i­cat­ed to the task and gave us long lec­tures on the im­por­tance of mend­ing the fences. As the years passed, I be­gan to ob­serve that Dad­dy Paul was get­ting old­er, he ap­peared a lot more frail and he showed signs of Parkin­son’s Dis­ease, as the shak­ing had be­come very no­tice­able.

We used to joke as young boys that re­gard­less of how much Dad­dy Paul shook when it came to pound­ing with a ham­mer, he nev­er missed a nail, and was al­ways on tar­get. Even in my last years with Dad­dy Paul, he would still in­vite me to walk up the riv­er’s edge with him, to fix the fences.

He took this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty se­ri­ous­ly.

I nev­er knew then that my ex­po­sure and Dad­dy Paul’s lec­tures up the riv­er on his walks along the bound­ary, was a life les­son and an anal­o­gy that I was be­ing taught, on­ly to pass on to lead­ers to­day and to ed­u­cate them in prop­er virtues, prac­tices and be­hav­iour.

Mend­ing fences to­day in gov­er­nance and pol­i­tics is the key to fos­ter­ing trust in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

Good gov­er­nance ex­em­pli­fies the crit­i­cal need for rep­re­sen­ta­tives to not on­ly seek the trust of their con­stituents but to earn that trust.

My team has been able to con­tin­ue re­search in this area and has pro­vid­ed some key ob­ser­va­tions on how we can ad­dress de­clin­ing trust. First, we have to un­der­stand what de­ter­mines whether peo­ple per­ceive their gov­ern­ment as trust­wor­thy. Sec­ond, we have to pro­pose so­lu­tions that con­sid­er these de­ter­mi­nants.

There are three key in­gre­di­ents for build­ing trust be­tween the pub­lic and rep­re­sen­ta­tives: peo­ple need to be­lieve that their gov­ern­ment is com­pe­tent enough to do its job well, benev­o­lent in its in­ten­tions, and hon­est with the peo­ple. If we want to fa­cil­i­tate greater trust be­tween the pub­lic and rep­re­sen­ta­tives, then our in­ter­ven­tions need to ad­dress these con­sid­er­a­tions. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, many of our so-called de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes do not ex­am­ine the in­ter­ven­tions from this per­spec­tive, which ex­plains why the most wide­ly tout­ed rem­e­dy for the trust is­sue—in­creas­ing trans­paren­cy—has fall­en flat. Why? Be­cause our lead­ers en­ter in­to the gayelle prom­e­nad­ing as trans­for­ma­tion­al lead­ers (about the peo­ple) and be­fore the ink can dry on their ap­point­ments, they are ‘ trans­formed’ in­to trans­ac­tion­al lead­ers, ne­glect­ing the peo­ple, and on­ly be­ing con­cerned about the project/prof­it/pol­i­tics.

Mend­ing fences am­pli­fies the call for more trans­paren­cy. In­creas­ing trans­paren­cy is a prac­ti­cal so­lu­tion to the trust is­sue. For one, greater trans­paren­cy means that peo­ple would have more in­for­ma­tion about the way their gov­ern­ment works, which is an im­por­tant first step for man­ag­ing ex­pec­ta­tions about what ser­vices and sup­port they can pro­vide. Giv­en that lack of knowl­edge about how the Gov­ern­ment works and low sat­is­fac­tion with ser­vices both di­rect­ly pre­dict low trust. There­fore one of the pri­ma­ry mes­sages, we the cit­i­zen­ry will need to hear, would be what are trans­paren­cy-fo­cused ini­tia­tives.

The key nar­ra­tive here is that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween trans­paren­cy and trust is bound to­geth­er by a gold­en thread.

So, the take­away is—if gov­ern­ments could just be open about what they are do­ing, how they are do­ing it, and how the pub­lic can hold them re­spon­si­ble for what they are do­ing, then peo­ple would trust them more?

The group that choos­es to mend their fences—build more trust, be­come more trans­par­ent—would weath­er the storm of the up­com­ing elec­tions, and may just pre­vail.

I stared as Dad­dy Paul ham­mered the nails in­to his fence. He mend­ed his fences, to have a se­cured bound­ary. To­day, I won­der if our po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives are mend­ing their fences, to se­cure their bound­aries?