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[av_heading heading=’ FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY IKE SEĆERES
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IT IS IMPORTANT to note that ācivil societyā is actually a relative term, relative to the āpolitical societyā, that is. This clarification should give us a better understanding about the term āgovernanceā, as distinguished from the term āgovernment.ā
In theory, āgovernanceā is supposed to be the joint action and responsibility of the people and those elected by the people to āgovernā them. That being the case, we could say that the civil society could represent the people in governance, and the political society could represent those elected by the people to govern them, i.e. the public officials.
In theory, anyone from the civil society who runs for public office becomes a politician in effect, whether or not he or she wins. It would be fair to say however that not unless he or she wins, he or she could not be perceived to be a member of the political society.
I am saying this because we need to draw the line between who belongs to where, because the motivations of the perceived leaders could vary depending on where they belong to, between these two societies.
Under normal conditions, we could say that those be belong to the civil society would have the noble purpose of doing so without personal gain. Much as we would like to say the same for those who belong to the political society, the political system automatically enables them to have personal gain whether they like it or not.
The 21st Century Lexicon defines civil society as āthe aggregate of non-government organizations and institutions that manifest the will of its citizensā, defining it as well as āthe individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government.ā
In both definitions the emphasis is on not being a part of the government and on being independent from the government. It also appears that both definitions could be interpreted to mean that corporations (a.k.a. corporate organizations) could also be considered as part of the civil society, acting as their business entities, or acting under their corporate foundations.
It is behind us now, but regardless of whether you will agree with me or not, the term ācivil societyā took on a negative meaning in recent years, so much so that we could even say that it has become a damaged institution. That is exactly my point, that regardless of how we view the present state of the civil society, regardless of whether we like it or not, we should rebuild it, because it is an institution that we need to sustain. In much the same way that we should rebuild our damaged environment, we should also rebuild our damaged institutions.
The combined power and influence of the non-government organizations (NGOs) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs is already a potent force that could do much for nation building, independent of government.
At this point, it would appear that civil society organization (CSO) is a redundant term, because all NGOs are in effect CSOs also, and there is no need to differentiate between the two. If by itself, acting independently, the civil society could already do much for nation building, imagine what could happen if the civil society and the political society could jointly work together?
To strengthen the civil society, we need to unite the NGOs and the CSR programs. After we do that, we need to give both of them a common purpose, and hopefully, that purpose would be community development in the context of nation building. As it is now, these two forces are each going their own ways, each doing their own things. As a result, there is hardly a critical mass that is formed anywhere, and the right economies of scale are not achieved.
CSR programs should not be confused with private and public partnership (PPP) programs. CSR is socially driven, whereas PPP is commercially driven. However, some PPP projects are imbued with a social purpose, even if these are still done with profit motivations. By the way, there are many types of PPP programs, among which are the build-operate-transfer (BOT) types and the joint venture (JV) types. However it is done, commercially driven or not, the bottom line is the same, and that is nation building./PN
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