Corruption results from a variety of economic, institutional, political and historical factors. It flourishes when democratic institutions are weak, laws are not enforced, political will is lacking, and when the media are not allowed to be partners in democracy. Corruption and unethical behaviour by public officials are serious threats to basic principles of democratic government, undermine public confidence in democracy and threaten the rule of law.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
The Tanzanian people are mourning the loss of their President John Magufuli who died last Wednesday. Upon his election as President in November 2015, Dr. Magufuli immediately began to initiate a number of actions aimed at: (i) not only controlling public expenditure but also reducing it; (ii) ensuring the country lives within its means; (iii) reallocating resources to areas where there were most needed; (iv) cutting waste and extravagance; and (v) reducing corruption. Dr. Magufuli made a surprise visit to the Finance Ministry the day after he assumed office, and was shocked to notice that most workers had not reported to work. He issued a stern warning that this practice must be brought to an immediate end. Other specific actions that the late President took include:
(a) Reducing inauguration expenses from US$100,000 to US$7,000 and reallocating the balance to the Muhimbili Hospital where he found the conditions very deplorable, with patients lying on the floor or sharing beds.
(b) Reallocating 90 percent of the funds earmarked for the State dinner to mark the opening of Parliament, to be used to purchase hospital beds;
(c) Cancelling Tanzania’s Independence Day celebrations for that year and declaring the day as a national day of cleanliness and sanitation. Funds earmarked for the celebrations were reallocated for this purpose;
(d) Banning all foreign travel by government officials. Instead, they must make regular visits to rural areas to learn and help solve problems facing residents. All tasks that required officials to travel abroad would be carried out by High Commissioners and Ambassadors. A delegation of 50 officials that was about to embark on a tour of Commonwealth countries was reduced to four;
(e) Restricting overseas travel by first and business classes to the President, Vice-President and Prime Minister only;
(f) Reducing the size of the Cabinet from 30 to 19 and merging some Ministries as a cost-saving exercise;
(g) Banning meetings, workshops and seminars at expensive hotels and using boardroom facilities of the various Ministries instead; and
(h Tightening up on revenue collections, including dispensing with the services of officers perceived to be incompetent, negligent or corrupt. As a result, monthly revenue collections increased by 67 percent.
On 26 May 2016, at the launching of my third book entitled “Governance, Transparency and Accountability”, former President David Granger gave the feature address. He asserted that the qualities of good governance, transparency and accountability emphasise the importance of effective government policy, the regulatory framework, political stability and representative democracy; and that the four go together, with corruption colliding with all four. He expressed the belief that the real sources of corruption are evident in crimes such as bribery, contraband smuggling, clientelism, cronyism, fraud, graft and nepotism. Describing these as aspects of the ‘monster of corruption’, Mr. Granger stated that they can escape detection because of a lack of transparency and that some people like opaque transactions in order to conceal corruption. They can go unpunished because of a lack of accountability and can flourish because of weak governance.
The former Head of State expressed the view that corruption in Guyana is most widespread outside of government. He spoke of petty corruption versus grand corruption, the latter appearing to have been overlooked by anti-corruption advocates in considering perceptions of corruption. He went on to state:
Corruption is corrosive because it weakens the enforcement of the law, democratic values, accountability and transparency, and public trust in government and the institutions of government.
Corruption largely discriminates against the poor and it favours the rich. It removes resources from the Government or from agencies which should be directed towards improving the quality of life; and what should be a public good is diverted into private gain. The practice of good governance, transparency and accountability is more than the antidote for corruption in government. It is also a remedy for ridding the disease of corruption in the private sector, in professional organisations, in civil society and also in international organisations.
I feel in order to eradicate corruption we must have very strong national institutions and, if you kick those institutions down, not only will corruption flourish but the State itself will become a rogue State and those institutions I wish to refer to are well known.
Mr. Granger was of course referring to the Public Service Commission, the Public Procurement Commission, the Integrity Commission, Elections Commission, Office of the Ombudsman, Police Complaints Authority, and the Office of the Auditor General. He asserted that we must ensure that the Elections Commission is made up of people who are capable of suppressing bias, and behaving and making judgements in a dispassionate way; while the Auditor General himself must be highly qualified and insulated from political bias.
Corruption in perspective
We are all aware that corruption is the abuse or misuse of entrusted power for private gain. It occurs when public officials deviate from formal rules, regulations, or established procedures and in doing so, they sacrifice the public good and the public interest in the furtherance of their own private interests. Corrupt officials, more often than not, exploit to the fullest possible extent, situations where there are vague and archaic rules, weak institutional and regulatory frameworks, and where discretionary power exists. According to TI, corruption erodes trust, weakens democracy, hampers economic development and further exacerbates inequality, poverty, social division and environmental degradation.
Corrupt officials often target major infrastructure works where large sums of money are expended, fewer people are involved and where one-off payments are made, thereby rendering the risk of exposure less compared with smaller projects. (Goolsarran S, ‘Corruption: Its Nature, Causes and Effects, and Suggestions on the Way Forward’, Public Fund Digest Vol. VI No. 1, 2006 https://www.icgfm.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/PFDFeb2006.pdf.) Many of these large projects lack adequate justification through the conduct of feasibility studies by independent and competent agencies to determine their economic and social viability. Where such studies have been untaken and the results are not favourable, they are often ignored, or manipulated to further the interest of the corrupt.
In the case of developing countries, most of the funding for large infrastructure works is made available through loans from international and other institutions. When the projects fail to deliver the desired outputs, outcomes and impacts, it is future generations that are saddened with the debt burden – long after the initiators and decision-makers leave the scene, perhaps with hefty overseas bank accounts and significant assets, including investments, in the names of relatives, friends and business associates. In all of this, who is to blame and to be held accountable individually and collectively: The initiators and decision-makers of the projects? The funding agencies that are required to approve loans only after proper due diligence is carried out? The contractors and the basis of their selection? The independent supervisors who monitor progress and are required to ensure that the works are carried out in accordance with the specifications contained in the project documents and who issue certificates of satisfactory completion of the works? The independent auditors who are required to carry out comprehensive audits of the projects and to certify the accounts financially and terms of achieving value for money? Or legislators who approve the funding and who are required to scrutinize in a timely manner the audited accounts and ask tough questions in an attempt to protect the interest of the public generally and more specifically the resources of the taxpayers?
Corruption manifests itself in various forms. Petty or bureaucratic corruption is the everyday abuse of entrusted power by public officials in their interactions with ordinary citizens, who often are trying to access basic goods and services in places like hospitals, schools, police departments and other agencies. It is also be described as ‘street-level corruption’. On the other hand, grand corruption is the abuse of high-level power that benefits the few at the expense of the many. It causes serious and widespread harm to individuals and society, and often goes unpunished.
Related to grand corruption is the notion of political corruption that involves what Inge Amundsen (1999) considers transactions between private and public sector actors through which ‘collective goods are illegitimately converted to private-regarding payoffs’. Amundsen suggests that a more precise definition of this form of corruption should identify the public sector actors as the political decision-makers and that it takes place at high levels in the political system. He went on to consider political corruption as:
The manipulation of political institutions and the rules of procedure and therefore influences institutions of government and the political system, and it frequently leads to institutional decay. Political corruption is therefore something more than a deviation from formal rules and legal norms, from professional codes of ethics and court rulings. [It] is when laws and regulations are more or less systematically abused by the rulers, side-stepped, ignored, or even tailored to fit their interest. Political corruption is a deviation from the rational-legal values and principles of the modern state, and the basic problem is weak accountability between the governors and the governed.
The paper by Amundsen is entitled “Political Corruption: An introduction to the Issues” and can be found at https://www.cmi.no/publications/file/1040-political-coiTuption.pdf
To be continued –
