Good Governance Attributes

The United Nations Committee for Development Planning in its report issued in 1992 entitled “Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development: Goals in Conflict?” identified the following as being part of the attributes of good governance:


1. Territorial and ethno-cultural representation, mechanisms for conflict resolution
and for peaceful regime change and institutional renewal;

2. Checks on executive power, effective and informed legislatures, clear lines of
accountability from political leaders down through the bureaucracy;

3. An open political system of law which encourages an active and vigilant civil
society whose interests are represented within accountable government
structures and which ensures that public offices are based on law and consent;

4. An impartial system of law, criminal justice and public order which upholds
fundamental civil and political rights, protects personal security and provides a
context of consistent, transparent rules for transactions that are necessary to
modern economic and social development;

5. A professionally competent, capable and honest public service which operates within an accountable, rule governed framework and in which the principles of merit and the public interest are paramount;

6. The capacity to undertake sound fiscal planning, expenditure and economic
management and system of financial accountability and evaluation of publicsector activities;


7. Attention not only to central government institutions and processes but also to the attributes and capacities of sub-national and local government authorities and to the issues of political devolution and administrative decentralisation.

I hope and pray that during next PPP government, we shall be able to deliver on all of the above. Good governance is not easy but can have lasting positive impact.