Abdoulaye W. Dukulé
15 December 2008
guest column
No country can ever claim to have eradicated corruption totally. However, governments can put in place measures to bring the phenomenon under control, and in her recent policy statement on the issue President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia seems to have placed herself on the path to finding long-term solutions to a scourge that has permeated Liberian society and government from its founding days.
Elected three years ago with the fight against corruption as one of her most important campaign planks, Johnson Sirleaf has complained often about endemic corruption in all branches of government – sounding, at times, on the brink of desperation. But her new policy statement is a clear departure from her past utterances, when she and others in the government have seemed at a loss for what to do.
In her landmark speech, the president welcomed collaboration from the media, the general public and political commentators. This is a novelty, and a departure from the defensive approach she has adopted in the past, when she sometimes gave the impression she was protecting some people. She also recognized the fact that corrupt practices are part of the very foundation of Liberian institutions. Finally, she pointed to the issue of impunity – the fact that some have seemed immune to the consequences of their corruption. In addressing these issues, the president seems to have reconnected with her campaign promise to find ways in which to fight against theft, waste and graft in the public domain.
President Johnson Sirleaf may have disappointed Liberians hungry for drastic measures by failing to suspend or fire individuals, or recommend prosecutions based on recent audits by the General Auditing Commission (GAC). Their frustration in a country accustomed to kangaroo courts and flashy judgments is understandable. But Liberians will have to outgrow their taste for fast gratification.
In the past, leaders have practiced the politics of scapegoating, using crowd-pleasing judgments to get rid of foes. Now, we must wait for the legislature to review the audit reports in their entirety. This the first time Liberians will have been given access to the full results of professional audits; they can wait a few more weeks to see what recommendations were made and how the executive responds. Only once that has happened, and the president has failed to act, can she be accused of "playing favoritism."
Corruption is the mother of nearly all ills in Liberia. President William Tolbert cited it as an evil it whenever he could. When those who overthrew him stormed the Executive Mansion, killed him and later executed members of his government, the soldiers needed just one phrase to justify their brutality: "rampant corruption." Later, the government they established would turn out to be even more corrupt than the one it replaced.
The administration of Charles Taylor simply turned government into a criminal enterprise, with international ramifications. What Taylor did was not much different to what past administrations had done; only he took it to a different level. Just 10 years ago, Liberia was off the charts of the world's most corrupt nations.
After Gyude Bryant was appointed in Taylor's place to preside over the transition to a democratically-elected government, some opposed taking the "Gang of Bryant" to court too hastily because we thought his administration should be given a chance to clean up its own house. But too many people wanted to see "blood," the government gave in to the pressure and Bryant and others were taken to court precipitately. Up to now nothing substantial has happened because of the weakness of the judiciary. Now, the same noise-makers are expecting Sirleaf Johnson to make the same hasty decisions.
Since 2005, new institutions have been created, all empowered to fight one or other aspect of the weaknesses of the Liberian state. The GAC, the Governance Commission, the Commission on Contracts and Procurement and the most recent, the Anti-Corruption Commission: all have a mandate to combat waste in government, close loopholes that make theft possible and recommend ways in which public institutions can be reformed. These commissions all seem to be taking their cues from a broad reform agenda, but they have operated in little pigeonholes, rarely or never coordinating strategies.
That is about to change, according to the president, and this is a major step forward. She said for example that the Governance Commission (GC) will be playing a bigger role. Collaboration between this commission and the GAC could lead to a triangulation in which the GAC uncovers shortcomings and loopholes, the GC makes recommendations and the executive takes corrective measures. Similar collaboration could be instituted between all the commissions.
A major weakness of the current system – and one that creates the impression of an imperial presidency – is that all agencies in government have an umbilical link to the Executive Mansion, with little horizontal inter-agency collaboration. Just as the new commissions would profit from collaborating in earnest, so too could ministries. For example, Defense, Labor, Youth & Sports and Gender all serve the same clientele: is there inter-agency collaboration between them?
Candidate Sirleaf Johnson promised to fight corruption in three steps: educating Liberians about its negative effects on social development; paying living wages to those working for government; and prosecuting those caught stealing public funds.
On the first two steps, although much remains to be done a great deal of progress has been made. Liberians have learned through daily experience how corruption affects their lives and how engrained it is in every aspect of society. Since 2005, salaries have risen almost 300 percent and people are better able to plan their lives around dependable incomes.
But there are serious constraints to the prosecution of culprits. The country has never had a strong judiciary. The weakness of the court system means that even if the government has the will to prosecute, its efforts are in vain if guilty people, notwithstanding the evidence, are acquitted by a court and a jury of peers. Yet Liberia needs the courts: nobody wants to return to the days when the executive could accuse and execute anyone at whim. So the judiciary as a final arbiter is in need of a serious overhaul.
For the first time in Liberia's history, a government is sidestepping sound bites and formulating a workable national policy against corruption. Better inter-agency coordination, especially amongst the new governance commissions, the strengthening of the judiciary and a media committed to play the role of watchdog will all play a crucial part in implementing the policy successfully. (Whistleblowers have a crucial role to play too, and they must be encouraged to play their part.)
Above all, responsibility for the success of this war against corruption rests squarely on the shoulders of the president. A few months ago, Auditor John S. Morlu said that auditing is more about finding loopholes and weaknesses in systems and recommending corrective solutions than trying to catch thieves. Of, course, he added, "If we come across a thief in the process, we must catch him and remove him."
But all in all, it is about fixing the system, changing a culture, re-arranging the way Liberia governs itself and how Liberians perceive government and public service. That is what the Johnson Sirleaf is now trying to do. She must stay the course and not be deterred by distracters, whether in-house or in the streets. And she must be encouraged and helped.
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This government and subsequent governments must create corrupt free environment, impact policy against corruptions, and demonstrate fight against corruption in emerging is serious business. The size of government must be drastically reduced with serious reduction in civil servants, merger/elimination of duplicity ministries/agencies, review and cancel ever-ending 50+yrs resource wasteful government building contracts, build all government ministries/agencies with 21st century workplace environment, establish competitive salaries commensurate with qualifications for all civil servants, decentralize government at local levels and create tax incentives for private sectors job creation for rural Liberia.
Besides these impact policies and programs, government must strengthen social service programs for under-previlged citizens; seniors, disabled, youths, and low-income civil servants with pension, health, skills, and infrastructures to acomodate/facilitate their needs. The immorality of ourselves contribute corruptions in Liberia, especially with men with too many girlfriends, children, self-made expenses, red bank deposits, red bank projects(houses, shops, business, lavish life-style etc) for these girl friends and boyfriends are conscious decisions our people need to make, especially adjusting their life styles, spending within their budgets and remaining committed their relations with their spouses and children.
The fight against corruptions is not only this President's problems to fight following decades of total collapse of social values, institutions, power greed, warriors and half-baked educated-in-charge for years. Rather, it's the collective responsibility of every citizens and change attitude to make our government and country corrupt-controlled, before we can make it corrupt-free. THE CORRUPTION FIGHT IS OUR FIGHT.
Thank you, David Flomo North Carolina, USA
To begin with no government can create an environment free of corruption, or, at least, no government, beyond mythology,has done that in the history of the human race.
Accordingly, the thought is purely aspirational. Not that anything is wrong with that; wrong, however, would be the false consciousness that the possibility can be an actualized. Perhaps, the reduction of corruption "at the margins" may be possible. Maybe.
Man or woman is too fickle for that kind of burden: the eradication thesis or, properly expressed, hope or prayer or whatever.
But, soupists eclipse mere men or women: with them, the aspirational determination of the projected IDEAL is decimated, effaced, resulting, precisely thereby, in a vast and deep conspiracy to bamboozle the captured of inhabitants of soupist territories.
Soupism, for God's sake, is CORRUPTION.
Sirleaf, a soupist, cannot be reasonably expected to efface her character: soupist corruption and obsfuscation.
what is to be done? Go figure!
Indeed no country has ever eradicated corruption and no one expects the Sirleaf Johnson's Administration to even attempt to undertake such an impossible endeavor. If there's anyone out there who truly expects Johnson Sirleaf to wipe-out corruption in Liberia, my only question to that person is why stop there? Why not ask her to stop all crimes, banish the Grand Reaper and let every Liberian live forever? In fact, while she at it, why not ask her to turn back the hands of time and prevent the civil war from happening, thereby saving a quarter of a million Liberian lives and billions of dollars in property damage? It is both sad and frustrating that every time this lady makes a careless remark and she is criticized for it, her surrogates like Mr. Dukule come out and accuse her opponents of expecting her to perform miracles. This tactic is in keeping with the old adage that anyone who has been caught with his/her hand in the cookie jar has adopted: deny everything, don't admit nothing and make counter accusations. In 1990 when innocent Liberians were been killed in the most heinous way, she went on the British Broadcasting Corporation and ordered Taylor to "level Monrovia, we will rebuild it." On January 8th of this year at the official opening ceremony of the TRC, she said, "IF called, I will appear" instead of, "I will be the first to appear." Then few weeks later when calls for her appearance before the TRC became intense she used her weekly radio program to say that her appearance before the TRC would create a "spectacle" and for that reason she would not appear. However, she continued, she was in the process of writing a tell-all book due out next year and anyone interested in hearing her side of the story would have to wait as she didn't want to give away the plot and jeopardize sales. Then as innocent Liberian women and children on the Buduburam Refugee Camp were been hauled off by Ghanaian Authority to an unknown destination for peacefully protesting their treatments in that country, she said that it was due to their own rudely behaviors. Then she launched a failed coup that killed one of the country's respected generals and financed a war that saw the demise of everything Liberian because the regime and its leader were corrupt. And now karma is upon her; Gemap, Governance Commission and the newly created Anti-Corruption Commission headed by her cousin have not helped curb the rampant corruption taking place in her own administration. Close friends and relatives in her administration are implicated in one scheme after another. Just this year alone, the president herself has offered to pay the tuition of all Lofa students at the University of Liberia, she gave the Press Union of Liberia U.S. $100,000 gift and has given the Dunn Commission another U.S. $400,000 to conduct an investigation into what has now been dubbed "Knucklesgate II." Where is all this money coming from? When Mr. Winston Tubman asked these questions, Mr. Dukule attacked him as been unworthy of criticizing the president since his uncle, William V.S. Tubman, was corrupt and that he, Tubman himself, also served in the Doe's government, another corrupt regime. Mr. Dukule and the president accused their opponents of wanting mob justice, when it is she who has created new and in the process of creating more bureaucracies headed by friends and family in an attempt to confuse the Liberian people and appease the international community by appearing to be tough on corruption. She has scapegoated unknown and unpopular government employees at the bottom to spare her friends and kindreds at the top. It is absolutely disturbing that after launching such a long brutal campaign against corruption to hear president now declare that the fight against corruption has just begun! The mandate to the Sirleaf's Administration by the Liberian people was very direct and simple: BEGIN the reconstruction and reconciliation process and give the Liberian people something they have never had before- a government that works in their interests. She has failed on all fronts and no smoke screen by her or her supporters is going deter us from using the internet, radio waves, print media or any other tool of the Information Technology to express ourselves. One thing we will not do is do what she did- destroy a country just because we disagree with its leader.