Limited operations against corruption

Editorial-February 22, 2015, 

Don’t arrest Duminda’ – order from higher up!

A retired public official has written to us, endorsing views expressed by former IGP Frank de Silva in a recent letter on bribery and corruption. The latter stressed, among other things, the fact that the onus was on the higher echelons of the public service to take action against corrupt officials under them. Both writers have put forth cogent arguments which deserve the attention of the government leaders, public officials and anti-corruption activists.

Leaving the country’s battle against corruption solely to the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) is like depending entirely on the National Child Protection Authority to ensure the safety of children and safeguarding their rights with others doing precious little to achieve those goals. The CIABOC, no doubt, has a pivotal role to play in tackling bribery and corruption; it needs more powers, adequate resources and the freedom to act without fear or favour, but other state institutions, politicians, the media and the general public cannot absolve themselves of the responsibility for their failure to help battle corruption effectively.

Corrupt public officials succeed in carrying out their sordid operations with impunity due to either connivance or serious lapses on the part of their superiors as well as politicians under whose purview their institutions come. Such high-ranking officials and the politicians concerned must also be held responsible for the country’s predicament.

Campaigns under successive governments to rid the country of bribery and corruption have gone by the board because they were highly politicised. Above all, a culture of corruption has evolved over the years and the people have apparently taken it for granted. Giving bribes is as unlawful as taking them, we are told. But, how many Sri Lankans can honestly say that they have never ever offered or given bribes to public officials willing to grant them various favours by bending the rules or even breaking laws? Most of them have at least greased the palms of RMV officials to obtain their driving licences. Sri Lankans learn how to benefit from bribery and corruption at a very tender age when they start schooling. Various documents are forged, several palms are oiled and children coached to lie at the so-called admission interviews conducted by public schools.

People who refuse to give bribes as a matter of principle are indeed rare and those who take the trouble of moving the CIABOC against those who solicit bribes or at least protest against that illegal practice are rarer. They seem to have fatalistically chosen to endure what cannot be cured.

Why anti-corruption campaigns launched from time to time fail to mobilize the people is understandable if one looks at the history of those who lead them. Some of them have even been punished by the courts for corrupt deals. Most of the self-appointed knights on a mission to slay the two-headed dragon of bribery and corruption have not accounted for their assets; they live in the lap of luxury spending millions of rupees as they do on their election campaigns. Strangely, they are never asked how they have amassed so much of wealth. The CID has recently interrogated an MP with alleged links to a drug baron on funds he has distributed among various persons and associations to further his political interests. This is a baby step in the right direction and it needs to be appreciated. But, the question is why neither the taxman nor anyone else has demanded to know from other politicians, regardless of the parties they represent, how they have acquired the colossal amounts of money they are spending on political campaigns.

It has not been revealed how much the two main candidates in the last presidential race, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena, received for their election campaigns. Who contributed those funds? How much of the money so donated was actually spent? These are some of the questions that the campaigners for transparency, accountability etc should answer.

Laws with stronger teeth and robust institutional safeguards are necessary for bringing the corrupt to book, but if corruption is to be battled effectively, there has to be a social movement devoid of a political agenda to mobilise the people. Anti-corruption drives used by holier-than-thou politicians as bludgeons against their opponents to achieve short-term political objectives with an eye to the next election end up being mere political circuses which only divide the people further along petty party lines and let the culprits pretend to be victims of witch-hunts.

What is needed is a well-planned, all-out war on corruption; politically determined limited operations won’t do.