allAfrica.com: Mozambique: Anti-Corruption NGO Criticises Constitutional Council (Page 1 of 1)

A Mozambican anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), has criticized the Constitutional Council, the body that gives final rulings in matters of constitutional law, for its "restrictive interpretation" of the constitution, which is "incompatible with the dynamic of institutional reform".

In November, the Council ruled as unconstitutional the decree of President Armando Guebuza that set up the Legality and Justice Coordinating Council (CCLJ), on the grounds that it violated the separation of powers by putting representatives of the executive and the judiciary on the same body.

The President of the Supreme Court was the chair of the CCLJ, and the Minister of Justice the deputy chair: so, in the eyes of the Constitutional Council, far from being independent of each other, in this instance the executive was made subordinate to the judiciary.

The same problem arose with the Anti-Corruption Forum, which was chaired by the Prime Minister with the Attorney-General as the Deputy Chair. In this case, Guebuza did not wait for a ruling from the Constitutional Council, but simply abolished the Forum.

The CIP, which sat on the Anti-Corruption Forum, argues that the forum and the CCLJ "were fundamental for the reform process". By simply looking at the letter of the constitution, the Council "did not take into consideration the substance inherent to each of these institutions, and the need for their existence in the current framework of state reform".

The CIP statement suggests that Mozambique has suffered from "a lack of a wide-ranging debate on the type of reforms we want". CIP argued that "in a context where democracy is still being built, it seems acceptable that there should be a minimum of inter-sector coordination. Putting the three powers (executive, legislative and judicial) into the same space of debate and coordination is not a serious matter, as long as the model chosen is not structured in a hierarchical relationship".

CIP also points out that the decisions to set up the Anti-Corruption forum, the CCLJ, and a third body scrapped because of constitutional doubts, the National Civil Service Authority (which was promptly replaced by a Civil Service Ministry), were all influenced and supported by donors. The Anti-Corruption Forum, for instance, was established "because the government and the donors had agreed that mechanisms to implement and monitor the anti-Corruption strategy were needed".

The Civil Service Authority, CIP added, was required to give fresh impetus to the public sector reform, another donor priority, while the CCLJ was needed "because it was seen that there was no coordination in the legal reform under way".

"Mozambique needs a strong and independent Constitutional Council", CIP declares, "but it also needs reforms that are coordinated and debated between the various sectors".

As for the Anti-Corruption Forum, CIP argues that such a body is certainly needed - but that the Mozambican model was not properly studied. As a result the forum suffered from serious weaknesses, notably an imbalance in its composition with the majority of its 78 members drawn from "cadres of the central, provincial, and district governments, and members of the ruling party". Figures from civil society were in a minority and were "merely decorative". The Forum "was not set up in order to bring together differing sensitivities with recognized merit in society. There were no clear selection criteria (in terms of competence and specialization) in indicating who could be a member of the Forum. It was the government's Forum". Nonetheless, abolishing the Forum leaves implementation of the Anti-Corruption Strategy entirely in the hands of the Inter-Ministerial Commission for the Public Sector Reform. Civil society and private business, the CIP document argues, now have "no possibility of interacting with the government in order to improve the anti-corruption approach in Mozambique".

Remitting anti-corruption debates to the provincial Poverty Observatories and the District Consultative Councils was also no solution "unless the way in which these bodies function is radically altered". CIP is skeptical that this will happen, regarding the district councils as highly politicized bodies, with little meaningful civil society participation. Instead, CIP suggests that Mozambican civil society should take the abolition of the Forum as an opportunity to create its own independent "Platform for Good Governance", with the priority task of monitoring the government's implementation of the Anti-Corruption Strategy "The abolition of the forum does not mean the abolition of the anti-corruption strategy", CIP stresses. "So a new impetus must be created so that the government cannot wash its hands of the anti-corruption strategy".

"In fact, monitoring of the strategy only makes sense if it is done by independent organizations, because only thus can it be assessed whether planned activities are indeed being carried out". Such monitoring, CIP adds, could be complemented by mechanisms for dialogue and consultation, at six monthly intervals, between the government and the proposed "Platform for Good governance".

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