Why We Won’t Have a COVID Accountability

The main purpose of government is to protect and develop its people. In our liberal indirect democracy, citizens vote for representatives who have almost no resources to do anything, they have nice titles though. Anyhow, either these few representatives elect a national chief executive (such as in the UK and Canada), or the entire population chooses its CEO (as in the US). In either case, the representatives assemble as the legislature.

The chief executive determines key goals and policy, with the legislature either rubber-stamped or slow to crawl over. The vast bulk of ‘democracy’, the 99% which consists of public servants and permanent consultants, are otherwise removed from even the most faded democratic processes. That there is the quickest summary of government; besides, the judiciary polices and protects the laws the legislature and executive put into place.

Within that ensemble, who takes the rap for the ineptitude of the public sector’s management of COVID? Let’s not forget that our elected representatives are elected not because of their management or public policy skills but because they know how to get elected. The two are distinct. Or perhaps better still, let’s step backwards a wee bit, how do we find out who in our government did what during the single largest healthcare crisis of our own lifetime? Well, that’s easy…we don’t find out either… and here’s why.

First, we have absolutely no idea what any of our elected representatives or public servants is doing on an everyday basis - who they’re meeting with or what, if any, decisions they’re taking. We quite literally know only what their PR person decides to Tweet or upload on their Facebook page. Quite frankly, they could have done a lousy job, but somebody else made the right decisions and made the rest look good.

Then, our public accountability agencies out there deliver their findings about the government’s handling of big problems about a decade after the event, by which time government staff have moved on and people’s focus shifted. That assessment comes in a format so dull that you’d rather read a medieval book, written in a foreign language you’ve never heard of, all in a font size which demands not a powerful magnifying glass, but a microscope.

And finally, if any information does make it to the public’s radar, it will be drowned by careful messaging, both honest truths as well as blatant lies, not to mention the fight to dictate the day’s daily news agenda. Edging towards election time, we will be pathetically drowned by well-funded information hoses chugging out more than what we can take to make sense of.

So, if you thought that there was going to be public sector accountability for whatever government has done on COVID, think again. Heads might well roll. But accountability we will not have.