In praise of the Almighty Executive Order

Apr 16, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- Democracy, as we know it, is a kind of ménage à trois — the elected, the appointed, and the terminally confused. They are locked into an unwanted marriage.  But today  I propose a radical idea, a suggestion so subversive it might get me disinvited from the next government cocktail: Executive Orders.

Yes. Executive Orders. Not to be confused with executive dysfunction, though frankly, in politics, the line is blurrier than some Ministers’ CV.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t that an American thing?” Yes, yes it is. It’s America’s contribution to global civilization, along with jazz, fast food, and the inability to use the metric system.

But listen, while the Founding Fathers were off writing constitutions and contemplating liberty, they also slipped in this nifty invention — the Executive Order. Basically, it’s the political equivalent of snapping your fingers and saying, “Make it so,” without having to schedule another subcommittee meeting that ends in interpretive sighing.

The first Executive Order, I believe, was issued by George Washington, probably something like, “All generals must stop writing novels during wartime.” Since then, Presidents have used them for everything: integrating schools, mobilizing troops, changing fonts — and I mean everything. There’s probably an Executive Order somewhere instructing interns on proper doughnut distribution in the Roosevelt Room.

Meanwhile, over in the U.K., home of the Westminster system, such executive decisiveness would cause seizures in the House of Lords. They don’t do orders. No, no. They do “deliberations,” “consultations,” and occasionally, “strongly worded letters.” If the Prime Minister wants to move the teapot, it requires a White Paper, three debates, a hereditary peerage, and a puff of white smoke.

Instead of Executive Orders, the Westminster system has ministers. These are often men and women who, before entering politics, were often very good at things — dentistry, teaching, running yoga classes and now find themselves responsible for things like national defence, economic strategy, and the future of urban drainage.

They arrive at their ministries with all the confidence they can muster. They squint at acronyms like GDP and IMF as if they’re furniture manuals. Their policy ideas are frequently lifted from binge-watching CNN. One poor fellow believed “decarbonization” was a new cologne.

And the civil service, bless its bulging file cabinets, is supposed to be “neutral.” Yes. neutral. Like Switzerland. You see, neutrality in the civil service is largely theoretical — like objective journalism in Guyana. Many of our civil servants are more political than politicians. They speak in passive voice. They nod encouragingly while quietly altering the minutes of your last meeting to ensure your downfall.

So what happens? Some ministers meddle. They meddle because that’s what people do when they don’t understand what’s happening. They annotate briefings with little question marks and doodles of confused faces. They summon Permanent Secretaries for 6-hour visioning sessions.

Hence, my proposal: bring in Executive Orders. Give some of the bewildered ministers something to do that feels powerful but is actually harmless — like blowing a conch shell or updating their LinkedIn profile. With Executive Orders, at least they could appear decisive. And nothing says “leadership” like signing a large document with dramatic hand flourishes while the civil service quietly switches it out for a press release that says the opposite.

Imagine: Executive Order No. 001: “Ministers may not send 72 WhatsApp messages to staff after midnight unless it involves fire, flood, or karaoke videos.”

Executive Order No. 017: “All new policies must be shorter than a BuzzFeed article and contain fewer than five semicolons.”

Executive Orders would be beautiful. Efficient. Merciful. It would spare us the agony of watching people who once managed regional plumbing supply chains now trying to design national reforms based on something they saw in a TED Talk. And civil servants — bless their blood pressure — could finally get back to doing what they do best: producing 93-page policy memos that say “maybe.”

Now, the critics will say this concentrates too much power in one person. But in Westminster, power is already concentrated. It’s just stored in obscure places: like ministerial dispatch boxes, or that mysterious drawer in the Cabinet Secretary’s office that smells faintly of Scotch.

I’m not saying Executive Orders are perfect. But they are a kind of aspirin for the migraine that is modern governance. They give our leaders the illusion of competence, the public the illusion of action, and the bureaucracy the illusion of moving forward — while everyone continues doing exactly what they were doing before: waiting for a decision that never arrives, wrapped in a report that no one reads.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

 

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