BY JOHN HOUANIHAU
People mandate their representatives to provide policy leadership, decision-making and law-making says Opposition Leader, Matthew Wale.
Speaking during the second reading of the Public Service Bill 2025 on the floor of parliament, Wale said that this ties policy decisions and law-making directly to the people’s mandate.
Wale said the public service is unelected and must not usurp the role of elected representatives in determining policy directions.
He went on to state that this is why it is important for ministers to take their roles seriously.
“It is why a cabinet is very, very important to our system of government. And once the policy decisions are made, it is the public service that implements the decisions. It is not the place of politicians to be directly implementing policy decisions,” Wale stressed.
He said that this is the boundary between political leaders and the public service.
“Ministers must not let PSs make policy. It is an important boundary that must be respected by both for our system of government to work effectively,” he said.
Wale said the government have encountered too many instances when this boundary has been deliberately breached.
“And in almost all those cases, some abuse of powers occurred,” he said.
Wale said that when the boundary is blurred or breached, the result is almost always corruption, abuse of public powers or such other biases.
“Both elected representatives and unelected public servants are trustees of the people of Solomon Islands over the powers and resources vested in them through the public offices they occupy and possess,” he said.
The Opposition Leader said that this principle of trusteeship is the critical foundation to all public service and it is important that this principle of trusteeship is taught as a core subject in its offerings on ethics.
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