Maravi

Corruption damages the reputation of politicians

Corruption damages the reputation of politicians
By Editor
Monday March 05, 2007 [02:00]

A lot of work needs to be done to combat corruption. The initiatives being undertaken by the National Assembly to sensitise our members of parliament on corruption need to be intensified. We agree with Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Mutale Nalumango that corruption is a symptom of fundamental political and economic problems and addressing these problems, therefore, requires dealing with the underlying economic, political and institutional causes. Corruption is not something that is going to disappear by itself or on its own; it needs to be fought with the same tenacity with which we fight other plagues. Without dealing with corruption, it will not make sense for those in government to ask the citizens of this country to pay any taxes. Why should people pay taxes to a government that allows the money so paid to be stolen, misused or abused?

Not dealing with the issue of corruption may also frustrate citizens of the countries that provide us with aid. Why should they allow their governments to give their taxes to governments that allow such money to be stolen, misused or abused? Where one is using other people’s money, money that is not his or hers, accountability is a must, an inevitability. If accountability fails, then the use of other people’s money should come to an end. Corruption can grow anywhere. But we know that it grows best when bad governments make it impossible to control.

The incidence of corruption is a result of the strength of incentives, the range and scale of opportunities, the availability of means and the risks of punishment. Corruption thrives on bad governance where controls are weak and decision-making is opaque, arbitrary and lacking in accountability mechanisms. For this reason it is very important to ensure that our people’s representatives in the National Assembly are not corrupt and fully appreciate or understand the causes of corruption and its consequences on the communities they were elected to serve.

Corruption has serious effects on the lives of people. When corruption is pervasive, it permeates every aspect of people’s lives. It can affect the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.

We agree with deputy speaker Nalumango that it is important to ensure that the anti-corruption laws passed in the House are enforced. If they can’t be enforced, why waste time and money to enact them in the first place? But the question is: why are anti-corruption laws not always enforced? We believe the main reason anti-corruption laws are not enforced is because there is no real political will on the part of our politicians, including our parliamentarians, to enforce them.

Some of the anti-corruption laws we have are inherited ones, imposed or accepted as a condition for receiving development assistance. They may not truly reflect the views of the government or politicians but are deemed necessary in order to gain international respectability and prevent donors from reducing, suspending or withdrawing their support.

There are also domestic political reasons for having anti-corruption laws. They are passed in order to appease or deflect criticism from political opponents and critical media without any commitment from the political leaders to enforce them.

However, we also do appreciate that in some cases some of our anti-corruption laws may be difficult to enforce. They might have been poorly drafted or imported wholesale from very different jurisdictions. Anti-corruption laws may be unenforceable in that they depend on the availability of information and resources, which simply do not exist in the country.

Enforcement requires effective auditing and monitoring institutions, a non-corrupt police service with specialist training and a non-corrupt judicial system. In the absence of any of these elements, the prospects for detecting corruption, accumulating evidence against individuals and securing convictions will always be poor.

Political will is a necessary condition for rigorous enforcement but it is not a sufficient one. Political will alone will not be enough if corruption is pervasive and deeply entrenched and political will will not compensate for a lack of funding, personnel and technical skills.
It is sometimes the case that when anti-corruption laws are not enforced, other laws are also not enforced. It is a symptom of a wider breakdown in the rule of law and effective government.

But government has to make choices about the allocation of resources and when there are multiple pressing needs anti-corruption enforcement may become one of the less pressing priorities.

And our experience over the last 11 or 12 years has shown that whereas a corrupt president is a guarantee of a corrupt government, having a saint as president who is personally immune to corruption does not ensure that the government will be equally pure.

When levels of corruption are high, it is possible to determine a structure of corruption that stretches from the lowliest clerk to State House, from our rural areas back to Lusaka and each layer of corrupt officials blames the one above them.

A strong president who is not personally corrupt will sometimes make an example of one or more individuals in the hope that it will deter others. Some individuals may be arrested and prosecuted, others may be fired from their ministerial and other government jobs, but not only does this not address the structural character of corruption, it normally involves members of the previous regime rather than the present one.

Some presidents start with good intentions and give anti-corruption work a high priority and relatively generous resources but, when members of their family or political allies are the target of corruption allegations, their commitment starts to fade.

Fighting corruption depends partly on political will and, if the president is personally free of corruption and willing to lead a sustained attack on corruption, there is some prospect of progress. The problem is that, in many contexts, the president faces a daunting array of urgent and intractable problems and it is very difficult even for the best-intentioned president to devote sufficient attention and energy to the task.

Anti-corruption work is not eye-catching or vote-getting and there are few simple, quick or inexpensive strategies, let alone any final victory. It requires constant vigilance and the president is too often deflected by natural disasters, financial crises, the wider challenges of development and maintaining his grip on office.
Anti-corruption strategies need to be embedded and institutionalised because experience suggests that focusing a strategy on an individual, however well-intentioned, does not produce sustained progress.

Unfortunately, even some apparently very well-intentioned presidents have often proved to be personally corrupt and their corruption contaminates the entire political system.
It is therefore impossible for government to contain corruption effectively without the help of others. When corruption is pervasive and deeply entrenched, no section of society, business sector and social group can escape its impact.

Truly, corruption is a social and economic problem. Its containment requires the mobilisation of social and economic sectors in addition to the commitment of the political authorities.

Corruption thrives when it is accepted, when victims of corruption do not protest, when it goes unreported and uninvestigated and when its consequences are not widely understood. Tackling corruption requires the active participation of all - the churches, business groups, trade unions, civic associations, the media, teachers, health workers, NGOs and parliamentarians. Containing corruption requires not only the commitment of government but also the participation of civil society and international cooperation and assistance.

It is very important that we all cooperate to fight corruption because of its impact, among other things, on growth and development. Corruption delays, disturbs and diverts growth and development. Its impact is difficult to measure directly because corruption normally occurs within institutions, which have other inadequacies and weaknesses. It is therefore difficult to separate corruption as an independent variable especially because corruption appears to be both a cause and effect of inefficient and unaccountable institutions.
What is clear is that when taken with other forms of institutional weaknesses, corruption is a cause of low economic growth.

Corruption is believed to have a significant impact on lowering investment, both foreign and domestic. It does so because potential investors perceive it as an unwarranted and pernicious tax. It raises the cost of investing without providing any guarantee of producing the required results. Corruption therefore increases the uncertainty and risk attached to investment as well and reducing the incentives for entrepreneurs.

Corruption can also influence the willingness of the donor community to provide aid and development assistance. High levels of corruption can cause donors to suspend, reduce or withdraw development assistance. When aid is not withdrawn it can be diverted to corrupt and non-productive purposes. Even when it is not diverted, aid allows corrupt governments to replace regular government spending which is then released for use in projects with high corruption potential.

When corruption takes hold, spending is diverted from productive programmes, such as education, with a high correlation with economic growth and into public spending on capital projects which generate large bribes. Corruption slows investment, erodes the revenue base and disturbs the composition of public spending.
Corruption has serious impact on poverty eradication.

Eradicating poverty requires macroeconomic stability, economic growth, improving institutional capacity and investing n services such as education and health that particularly benefit the poor.
High levels of corruption can threaten economic stability, slow down growth, weaken institutional capacity and reduce the resources available for social programmes.

If macroeconomic stability can be maintained, inflation will be low which is of benefit to the poor and such stability provides a platform for economic growth. High inflation can erode the tax base and affect the government’s ability to maintain social spending. High inflation is often a result of excessive government borrowing and corrupt politicians and civil servants or public workers have personal incentives to encourage high spending levels because it provides more opportunities for corruption.

We shouldn’t also overlook the fact that corruption does impact negatively on human rights. Corruption in all its forms constitutes a violation of human rights of the people who experience it. Governments who are in complicity in corruption are failing in their duty to protect and promote human rights.

The struggle for human rights and the struggle against corruption are intimately and inextricably linked because corrupt governments are no respectors of human rights. Millions of people are denied their human rights and corruption plays an important role in perpetuating this situation.

Corruption is also a pernicious form of discrimination. Its purpose is to receive favourable, privileged treatment from politicians and officials. There would be no purpose in bribery if all seekers of the same service were treated equally. Corruption violates human rights because it discriminates against the poor by denying them access to public services and preventing them from exercising their political rights.

And as the nation recently observed in the case of Konkola Copper Mines’ pollution of the Kafue River, corruption has a devastating impact on the environment. It is the enemy of environmental protection and a major obstacle to environmental management. Corruption creates problems for our environmental council because it undermines environmental policies, subverts existing laws and regulations, reduces the accountability of corporations and bypasses inspections and monitoring systems.

For the poor, corruption damages their environment in many ways. It also damages their health and endangers their lives. The poor are disproportionately affected by damage to the environment. History shows that the rich have always had the means and inclination to move out of stinking cities for more congenial environments.

And those in the private sector should not cheat themselves that they can survive corruption. Corruption has a negative impact on the scale, form and growth rate of private sector development. It has both direct and indirect consequences for the conduct of business. Corruption helps distort the market by redirecting economic activity from one sector to another.

In so doing, corruption destroys the structure and pattern of economic development and reduces the efficiency of economic activity. It has fiscal, budgetary and debt effects which collectively damage the economy and make private sector development very difficult. In its extreme form, corruption destroys economies and makes business activity impossible. Corruption reduces the incentives and increases the costs and risks of doing business.

The effects of corruption are not only economic, there are also social and cultural costs associated with it. Corruption is divisive and makes a significant contribution to inequality and conflict. It separates the poor from the rich, the observers from the players. It helps divide ethnic groups and communities from each other and promotes rivalries and jealousies.

High levels of corruption help breed a culture of suspicion and distrust. It breaks down social cohesion, making it more difficult to persuade people to work together for the common good. Corruption encourages and rewards selfishness and denigrates collective action.

In social terms, corruption disempowers people and encourages their sense of alienation. It undermines respect for authority and increases cynicism about leaders at all levels of society. It discourages participation in civil society and elevates self interest as a guide to conduct. Corruption can divert resources away from social programmes with a number of negative consequences.

As education spending falls, so will levels of literacy. As health spending falls, the incidence of disease will increase. The poor will be increasingly marginalised and their sense of social exclusion will be strengthened. Within the ranks of the poorest people, women will be particularly disadvantaged and prevented from developing their capacities and taking a full part in society.

Where there is corruption, people normally start looking at all politicians as crooks, and this is bound to widen the gap between the political class and the rest of society. It will stimulate people with resources to turn away from government and politics and provide their own solutions to problems.

Corruption will foster an increasing withdrawal from membership of political organisations for fear of being identified with the corrupt political class. Corruption damages the reputation of politicians and encourages people to go into politics for the wrong reasons; it undermines public trust in politicians and political institutions and processes; it encourages cynicism and discourages political participation; it can contribute to political instability, provoke coup d’etats and lead to civil unrest; it perverts the conduct and the results of an election, it ensures that the poor remain politically powerless; it consolidates political power and reduces political competition; it delays and distorts political development and sustains political activity based on patronage, clientelism and money; it limits political access to the advantage of the rich; and it reduces the transparency of political decision-making.

Clearly, corruption is anti-thesis of good governance and democratic politics. For those striving to create open, competitive and transparent forms of political activity, corruption offers a range of obstacles and imposes significant costs.

For all that has been stated, it is clear that corruption affects all of us and it should be fought by all of us. Those fighting for human rights, the plight of the poor and good governance cannot prudently turn their backs on the fight against corruption. But we have seen them do so. Those in business can also not sensibly leave the fight against corruption to others thinking it doesn’t affect them.

We have seen them do so. Let us all join hands and fight this plague of corruption with the same tenacity that we fight other dangerous plagues. And for this reason we urge deputy speaker Nalumango to take the fight against corruption as not a one-off parliamentary workshop matter but as part of the systematic and consistent struggle.

Labels: ACC, CORRUPTION, EDITORIAL, GOVERNANCE, MINISTERS

posted by MrK @ 5:11 AM