What should Rwandans expect from incoming district mayors?

As the country gears up for the next cycle of grassroots elections, which will lead to election of new district mayors, experts have predicted that the next mayors will be working for citizens who have higher expectations and who are ready to demand both accountability and more economic development from their leaders. From access to water and electricity to jobs for young people and a fair system of managing social protection programmes like Girinka and VUP-Umurenge, observers say today’s citizens are more demanding and ready to hold their leaders to account. According to Justus Kangwagye, the chairperson of the Rwanda Association of Local Government Authorities (RALGA), some mayors often fail on their jobs because they can’t meet their constituents’ expectations. “The biggest challenge is to meet people’s expectations. What people need tend to be too much in comparison to what the leaders can deliver,” Kangwagye, who is also the mayor of Rulindo, told The New Times. A look at the term of the outgoing mayors hints at how difficult it can be to maintain the job of a mayor since about one-third of the elected mayors couldn’t complete their terms. Out of 30 mayors who started their five-year term in 2011, 11 are no longer in office over their failure to meet their job obligations. Some resigned over failure to deliver on their performance contracts, poor service delivery, and mismanagement of public funds like in the case of funds meant for the community-based health insurance scheme, Mutuelle de Santé. Despite the resignations, experts say the latest mayoral term was more stable than previous terms and that a lot was achieved during the five-year period. Ladislas Ngendahimana, a communications expert with the Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC), described the current term as the most stable of all terms and one that helped to consolidate the local government system. “This period was marked by stability and better performance. Mistakes that were made were mainly because of individual weaknesses, not the system,” Ngendahimana said. He is probably right on the stability point because the rate of mayors’ resignations during the 2011/15 term is lower than in the previous term where only seven mayors of the 30 elected in 2006 were still in office by September 2010. Others had resigned or had been replaced mainly due to mismanagement, corruption or abuse of office. Going forward, officials predict that new mayors who will be elected next month will be expected to improve service delivery, create more jobs for increasingly educated young people, reduce districts’ reliance on the central government for their budgets, and continue to fight poverty. Financial independence In what he calls “districts’ over-reliance on the central government for their survival,” Kangwagye said more than 90 per cent of districts’ annual budget is provided by the central government, which he hopes that incoming mayors will help change. “If districts can reduce that overdependence and make money to do some little things, that would be a good step,” he said. The mayor also says the incoming mayors will have to be more creative to create jobs for young people in their constituencies, grow the economy, and increase efficiency in tax collection. “So many young people have gone to school and equipping them with skills to produce is going to be a challenge. There is a lot of critical thinking that is required,” Kangwagye said. Ngendahimana said the biggest challenge for incoming mayors is that the people today are more demanding of accountability and delivery from their leaders. “They expect delivery and those who won’t deliver will not hold their jobs for more than three years,” he said. Amb. Fatuma Ndangiza, the deputy chief executive of Rwanda Governance Board in charge of governance promotion and decentralisation, agrees with Ngendahimana and explains that people cherish what they have achieved in the past few years in terms of development and they expect more. She said new mayors will need to be accountable, improve service delivery, and bring about the much needed infrastructure such as water and electricity. “Service delivery is not yet good enough for citizens. There is still need for supervision to enhance service delivery,” Amb. Ndangiza said, calling for a closer collaboration and coaching for the most local officials. The official added that new mayors will have to maintain efforts to fight poverty and ensure good management of pro-poor government programmes such as the One Cow per Poor Family and VUP-Umurenge schemes. “There are many projects to develop citizens but they need monitoring from local officials. There is need for follow-up to ensure that people benefit from these pro-poor programmes,” Amb. Ndangiza said. The calendar of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) for 2016 local government polls shows that district mayors will be elected countrywide on February 27. A district mayor is elected by a district council made up of representatives of all the sectors in the district, representatives of the youth and women in the district, a representative of the private sector in the district, as well as those representing people living with disabilities in the district. Click here for related interview editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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What should Rwandans expect from incoming district mayors?