Pauline Etienne
5 December 2007
Port Louis — The National Integrity System country report was officially launched yesterday. Although the structures established to fight against corruption are quite satisfactory, the main problem remains the implementation of rules.
"The structure of institutions in this country is generally adapted to the fight against corruption. The challenge now is to see how to make them work efficiently," said the president of Transparency Mauritius, Jacques de Navacelle. He was launching the National Integrity System country report yesterday afternoon at Domaine Les Pailles. The funding of political parties appears as one of the major challenges Mauritius is facing. This was one of the main recommendations of the report, written by Shakti Callikhan for Transparency International after research and interviews with those responsible for the main public and private institutions concerned in February and March this year.
"It is important to note that great efforts have been made in the fight against corruption over the past few years," she pointed out at the very beginning. "A new awareness is visible in legislative measures, procedural reviews to improve transparency and private business initiatives aiming to find diverse but complementary means to combat the many forms of corruption that exist in the country," states the report. But it also highlights the "many challenges to be overcome in order to perfect the overall anti-corruption system, in certain sectors in particular".
Although the very fact that an issue considered taboo has finally been addressed publicly is in itself a positive step, the problem of funding of political parties remains to be solved. "The recent case of electoral corruption in which the Supreme Court declared the election of a politician invalid (even if the matter is currently under appeal) has sent a clear signal reverberating around the whole of the political class. ( ) This was the first time this has happened in the legal and political history of the country; as such, this case alone represents a significant advance," writes the author of the report. So, it appears clearly in the report that, "the effort to improve transparency goes hand-in-hand with the need to draft clear rules for how parties operate on the basis of a legal framework for their activities".
According to Jacques de Navacelle, "political parties should have a judicial entity so that they are bound to publish their accounts". It is only then that they will become accountable to the public. However, he made it clear that he did not want to express himself on the way these parties should be funded. "Each country has its own methodology. A common capital could be set by the whole private sector and redistributed to all political parties or the private sector could no longer be allowed to contribute as is the case in France where it is the state's responsibility to fund parties depending on their electoral results," he said.
The fact that civil servants at the top of the hierarchy do not have to declare their assets is considered as a loophole, as their declaration of assets "would allow for stricter control to be exercised over the integrity of their conduct".
But the public sector is not the only one to be targeted. The recent scandals in private companies may have made many of them more aware of the need for a code of ethics and more transparency but there are still legal loopholes that may have to be dealt with to ensure more equity between the private and the public sectors. The amendment of the Prevention of Corruption Act to include any officer instead of just public officers would be among the necessary changes, according to the report.
The access to public information is also seen as one of the main obstacles to transparency - thus encouraging some sort of corruption. The report indeed makes it clear, "Today, public accountability of civil service managers is a virtual concept because without access to the relevant information no one can request clarification on the reasons why civil service managers have taken up certain positions". This is why the author recommends the introduction of a Freedom of Information Act which "would facilitate access to all public information, thereby indirectly increasing transparency in the management of public affairs".
Judiciary can't fully play its role
As the main pillar in the fight against corruption, the judiciary does not appear to have the financial and human resources to fully play its role. The length of court procedures may lead many people to believe that scandals or cases have been buried, as they no longer hear about the case through the media for some time. Moreover, this problem "helps explain why people are not likely to blow the whistle on cases of corruption. People know that if they report an act of corruption they will spend years being summoned to give evidence in court and will be caught up in a system of successive adjournments of the cases. As a result, they would prefer not to be involved".
Moreover, the lack of citizen commitment to denounce malpractices or acts of corruption is also an issue that is addressed in the report. It is seen as a "fundamental obstacle to mounting an effective battle against corruption". With this in mind, the introduction of "civil education in the school syllabus (understanding citizenship and its values)" is seen as a means to "influence the mindset of future generations and thereby allow for a more effective fight against corruption".
Now that this report has been made public, it will be the responsibility of the authorities in charge to make sure that the work of the institutions is properly assessed and maybe give them the means to work in a more efficient way. There is much to be done to achieve a more transparent Mauritius
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