1. Executive
Summary
The Good Governance Initiative
(GGI) is a coalition of civil society organizations, academics, and community
activists seeking to promote good governance in Palestine through providing citizens with
regular, impartial assessments of public sector performance. This first monitoring report of the GGI
focuses on assessing government performance in certain key areas during the
period from 1st April 2006 to 30th September 2006. The assessment is based on a set indicators
developed by the GGI to measure the overall performance of the Executive and
Legislative branches of government taking into account fundamental principles
of integrity, transparency accountability, effectiveness, efficiency and the
rule of law.
This report relies to a large
extent on information and data gathered from official government sources and
media reports. Unfortunately, obstacles were faced in information and
data gathering due primarily to of lack of cooperation from some government
officials concerned about the political ramifications of disclosure; this was
compounded by the ongoing public sector strike. Accordingly, this report is necessarily
limited to assessing government performance in those areas where information
was accessible.
The publication of this report
and the period it covers coincide with an unprecedented political, economic
and social crisis in the occupied Palestinian territories. This crisis
has severely undermined the new government’s ability to manage the public
sector and deliver public services and any assessment of the government’s performance
must be viewed in this context.
Accordingly, the realities on the ground have resulted in a shift in
the good governance discourse from considerations of what the government is
doing to improve public sector performance towards how international
responses to the election result may be undermining public institutions. However, it remains important to keep an
eye on trends and developments in governance, some of which are not
organically related to current crisis.
President's Office
The President’s Office has
historically played a very limited role in formulating a vision for, and
guiding the implementation of, PNA reform.
This has lead some commentators to view the President's election
manifesto call for reform as a mere slogan which has still not been
translated into a detailed, realistic reform program. This state of affairs has not improved
during the period covered by this report and in fact certain developments,
such as the institutionalization of an international funding mechanism (the ‘Temporary
International Mechanism’) that by-passes the Ministry of Finance, represent
the beginnings of a reversal of the modest achievements in reform made by
previous governments. It is of course difficult under the current
circumstances to address strategic leadership issues which were never
properly dealt with during prior, more stable periods but the President’s
office must avoid taking decisions and actions that undermine the longer-term
governance reform agenda.
Cabinet of Ministers
Cabinet meetings continued
broadly as planned despite various travel restrictions and other logistical
difficulties. The Cabinet met 26 times during the period covered by this
report, taking more than 300 decisions.
Most of these decisions were administrative decisions, not policy
decisions. Whilst a focus on
operational, administrative matters is not necessarily surprising during a
period crisis, the Cabinet’s inability to focus on strategic policy decisions
to address the ongoing political and socio-economic is a weakness of great
concern. It is also important to note
that excessive focus on administrative decisions at the expense of strategic
policy development has been a major weakness of successive Cabinets ever
since the PNA was formed.
Transparency of the Cabinet
functions gradually diminished over the period of covered by this
report. Moreover the Cabinet has not
carried out any tangible steps in reforming public administration and civil
service, or even continued the work of the previous government in this area.
Despite election manifesto
commitments to address lack of progress in public administration and civil
service reform, including in particular corruption in the PNA and the
inflated size of the public sector payroll, the new Cabinet has not taken any
tangible, positive steps forward in this area. In some cases, the situation has in fact
worsened; the Cabinet has approved approximately 10,600 new posts in the
public sector, representing an increase of approximately 7.5%.
Ministries of Health and Education
The performance of the PNA in
the provision of health services has come under increased pressure due to the
deteriorating economic situation as well as Israeli military operations and
closures. Allocation of funding to the MoH has historically been low and in
2005 and, by default 2006, only 7% of the public budget was allocated to MoH
compared with the allocations to the Ministry of Interior and National
Security of 24.3%. MoH debts have increased
to USD 20 million in 2006 and drugs inventory has dropped to critical levels.
During the period covered by this report MoH policy has focused on
rationalizing non-critical curative services, including diagnostic services,
surgeries and outpatient clinics.
Students were on summer
vacation for most of the period covered by this report and, as such, it is
difficult to assess education service delivery since the formation of the new
government. However, there have been
some indications of what the future might hold. For example, more than 1,200 new teachers
have been appointed through a highly transparent process involving public
advertisement of open positions and selection standards, and objective
testing of candidates. On the other
hand MoEHE, as was the case under previous governments, made no significant
progress in relation to the transparency of its policies, strategies and
resource allocation decisions or in improving coordination with
non-governmental service providers in the education sector. Accordingly, other than the recruitment of
new teachers there is little evidence that the MoEHE adequately prepared
itself for the new school year and, in particular, the threatened teachers’
strike.
Ministry of Finance
The international aid embargo
placed on the 10th government has significantly worsened the fiscal position
of the PNA. The fiscal position was
already weak prior to the elections and has now reached a point of serious
crisis. The new government is now
failing to pay the public sector salaries on a regular basis and has not produced
a budget for 2006 (on August 29th 2006 was exempted from doing so) due to the
prevailing crisis. The PNA look set to
resort to various informal coping mechanisms to navigate this financial
crisis which seem likely to undermine previous achievements in the area of
public financial management reform and, in particular, the single treasury
account, the public budget process and the centralized payroll system.
Palestinian Legislative Council
Fiscal and security developments since the
legislative elections have created an extremely challenging operating
environment for the PLC. More than 40
Palestinian parliamentarians have been incarcerated by the Israeli security
services and ongoing military operations and domestic conflict pose an
ongoing threat to the peaceful operation of the PLC. Up until the beginning of September, the
PLC continued to hold regular sessions but there have been no subsequent
meetings.
During the PLC sessions which did take place during
the period covered by this report, the primary focus was either on internal
administrative issues and overturning previous legal instruments (primarily
Presidential decrees). There was very
little focus on discussing the ongoing political, economic and security
challenges and no substantive work on legislative debate or drafting.
Published by Good
Governance Initiative - 2006
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