COMMENTARY: Our responsibility as Citizens

The social and economic development of our communities depends on we as a people taking the time out to educate and elevate ourselves to a level at which we can make a positive contribution to its development.

Mahatma Ghandi once said “You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.”

I see it as my civic responsibility to get involved in my community. To ask questions of our representatives if I feel we are not properly represented and to ask questions of my people when I believe we fail in our responsibility as sentinels, in the protection of our rights, freedoms and community.

The obvious result of our negligence in realizing and acting on matters which demand we exercise our civic responsibility to act can only lead to stagnation and regression of our communities.

We cannot continue to operate on the basis of “We think so because other people all think so; or because – or because – after all we do think so; or because we were told so, and think we must think so; or because we once thought so, and think we still think so; or because, having thought so, we think we will think so…”

The appallingly poor quality of leadership and political representation on offer can be directly linked to the low expectations of our leaders defined by our youth and society in general.  There may be a direct correlation to the attitudes of our young people especially, in the lack of civic instructions in our curriculum.

Citizenship carries with it both rights and responsibilities.  “Active citizenship is the philosophy that citizens should work towards the betterment of their community through economic participation, public volunteer work and other such efforts to improve life for all citizens.”

Citizenship was equated by Virginia Leary (1999) as connoting “a bundle of rights — primarily, political participation in the life of the community, the right to vote, and the right to receive certain protection from the community, as well as obligations.”
One of these rights and obligations which we enjoy as citizens is the right to vote and to elect our governments. To elect a government we must understand what a politician is.

A politician or political leader is an individual who is supposed to be involved in influencing public policy and decision making. This should be their focus.  In the Dominican context that is not always so. People who hold decision-making positions in government can also be referred to as politicians.

“A politician who makes politics the source of their income, yet has to face re-election every few years can be less likely to make bold decisions or side with an unpopular bill or movement.”

For both the career politician and his constituents, the fear of “rocking the boat” leads to a stagnant political climate, in which it becomes hard to address injustices and create change”

For the career politician a stagnant political climate is ideal as he is part of the status quo and the stagnation ensures that he remains in office.
The Government, as an independent ruling body charged with the responsibility of acting in the people’s interest, but not as their proxy representatives not necessarily always according to their wishes, but with enough authority to exercise swift and resolute initiative in the face of changing circumstances.
To elect the best representative or government for that matter one must vote ‘wisely’. In order to do so we must vote based on sound reasoning.  We must think critically.

Critical thinking is defined as “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.”

According to Linda Elder, to be critical thinkers we must “Avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others.  Recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit to a life-long practice toward self-improvement.  We must embody the Socratic principle:  The unexamined life is not worth living, we must realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world.”

The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.
~ Charles Eliot Norton

It is incumbent upon us that we look critically at our social and political circumstance and then live up to our civic responsibility, to demand the most exacting fiduciary standards, given that politicians are the most important fiduciaries in any society, given they hold coercive power over the people.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the management and staff of Dominica News Online and its parent companies.