Centre for the Study of Corruption

Transparency International (TI), the world’s leading anti-corruption NGO, has published the latest edition of its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). On the face of it, the 2015 CPI shows the UK to be doing rather well. But let’s not get carried away, there’s still plenty of work to be done.

How much corruption exists and which states are best at fighting it? Transparency International, a leading anti-corruption NGO, has developed a way of giving us at least an indication as to what the answers to these questions might be. Every year TI publishes data on perceptions of corruption around the world. The 2015 version, published on 27 January, included 168 countries and territories, with every one being given a score out of 100. The nearer to three figures a country is, the better it is performing. The nearer to zero a country is, the more work it has to do.

As has become the norm, the Nordic countries come out on top – Denmark is in first place (91 points), whilst Finland is second (90) and Sweden third (89). North Korea (8) and Somalia (8), on the other hand, are joint 167^th (and last). Over the last 12 months the UK’s performance has improved noticeably. In 2014 Britain registered 78 points for 14^th place. In 2015 this improved to 81 points and 10^th respectively. Given that it takes time for change to happen, this leap is noticeable, and only a handful of countries can claim to have made more progress than the UK has this year (Czech Republic, Rwanda and Kuwait being good cases in point).

Why the improvement? On the one hand David Cameron’s governments have quietly begun to push a series of anti-corruption initiatives; in December 2014 the UK produced its first anti-corruption plan, for example, and David Cameron has made a number of big speeches where the issue of corruption has come up (see this one in July 2015 in Singapore for arguably the best example). Furthermore, both the Con-LD coalition and the Tory government that has followed it have made a relatively big deal out of tackling thorny issues such as revealing more about who profits from owning companies (so-called ‘beneficial ownership’).  The UK Prime Minister is also trying to mobilise international support for his anti-corruption agenda, and this will come to a head at a global anti-corruption summit in London in May 2016.  All of this is positive and, slowly but surely, the UK is making a name for itself as a real anti-corruption advocate.

We do, however, still need to be careful in reading too much in to all of this.  That’s so for two reasons. On the one hand the CPI is certainly not without its critics, and there are sound reasons not to take its findings too seriously. On the other hand the UK still faces a host of corruption challenges, and some hard yards lie ahead if these challenges are going to be met.

In terms of the CPI, it’s not clear that the results actually reflect the reality on the ground. Boiling down perceptions of corruption to one solitary number is undoubtedly an overly simplistic way of assessing the amount of corruption that is perceived to exist. Plus, in complex societies the types of corruption that financial centres such as the City of London face are likely to be altogether different to those facing, say, rural communities in northern Scotland.

Secondly, the CPI doesn’t even claim to measure what is really going on; TI, on the contrary, is always quick to claim that it measures perceived and not actual levels of corruption. Whilst knowing how people view problems is undoubtedly useful, it’s not the same as knowing what is actually going on. A nuance that can be lost all too quickly.

Respondents to the surveys included in the CPI are also left to define corruption for themselves. Practically, this makes sense, but it will of course mean that different people will be responding to a phenomenon that they could quite plausibly understand in different ways. Finally, the CPI also claims to concentrate solely on public sector corruption. That’s fine as far as it goes, but what of the regular stream of private sector indiscretions? Think Libor, think VW emissions, think GSK. The corrupt acts of private sector firms and individuals have impacts on the wider public (in these cases on the interest rates you pay, the air you breathe and the cost of the drugs that you need when you’re ill) and yet they are purposefully avoided.

So what should we make of the UK’s apparent anti-corruption success story? On the one hand, the CPI should never be taken too seriously. It has too many flaws for that. But paradoxically it may well be precisely these flaws that make people think a bit more and dig a bit deeper to work out what really is going on. In the case of the UK that digging will lead to a Prime Minister who does seem keen to make progress in this area. That doesn’t mean that the UK is sailing in tranquil waters; on the contrary, it should prompt us to engage with the challenge of, say, dealing with the money-laundering that goes through the UK’s outsized financial services sector and the open data agenda. If the CPI makes even a small contribution to helping us make progress there, then it is a parlour game worth persevering with.

Dan Hough

University of Sussex

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has now been around for well over a decade (see here for more on the EITI’s history).  Formed as a response to the much vaunted ‘resource curse’, the EITI has developed a position for itself as an important and innovative actor in the fight against natural resource-focussed corruption.  Indeed, it leads the way in developing consultative processes for more openness in the oil, gas and mining sectors.

The EITI board met for the 31^st time in Kiev from 7^th– 10^th December 2015.  And, there was important (internal) business to hand.  There are important changes happening within the EITI, one of which being the appointment of a new chair to continue the work of former UK politician Clair Short.

Fredrik Reinfeldt, the former Swedish Prime Minister (2006-2014), has now taken up his post as her successor.  On doing this he made an upbeat speech, claiming that he was “thrilled to be nominated as the next Chair of the EITI”.   He further added that “questions about openness, transparency and accountability have always been close to my heart” and that he was passionate about seeing natural resources “used in an equitable manner for the benefit of all citizens”.  

Reinfeldt will have plenty to keep him busy.  One of his first tasks will be to oversee the (s)election of new members to the EITI board in 2016 and shortly after that to co-ordinate and lead the EITI Global Conference in Peru (see here).

The challenges that led to the creation of the EITI remain every bit as significant now as they were back then.  The aim of improving transparency in the extractive industries is as important for developed countries as it is for less developed countries. In the USA, for example, big players such as Exxon Mobil Corp have not shared information about the taxes they pay at home, and that even though the company is a member of the EITI US Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG). Indeed Exxon is one of several energy companies that has failed to share U.S. specific tax information for a recent report released by the EITI.

There is another potentially serious challenge facing the new chair, the board and the EITI secretariat in Oslo. Clare Short highlighted the issue in her November Newsletter before she handed over to Reinfeldt:

“The issue for the EITI is whether we should make something compulsory and set up many countries to fail or whether we should continue to encourage all countries to make progress.  The real issue is how the EITI should build on the work so far to encourage continuing progress towards the EITI Principles in all countries” 

Civil society groups, one third of the voting members of the EITI board, have been uncompromising in pursuing this relatively hard-line aim at a time when the chair believed more diplomacy was needed. Some London based ‘transnational advocacy non-governmental groups’ (TANGOs) have regularly blocked pleas from the board and industries to allow more time for some countries, such as Azerbaijan, to provide company and tax information to the EITI.

For those not quite so familiar with the EITI’s procedures, membership is often critically important to less economically developed countries (even with natural resources) not least because membership is also a qualification for international aid from the World Bank.

On the other hand London based TANGOs set standards for other MSGs around the world. Recently, for example, they introduced new guidelines for the disclosure of Beneficial Ownership information in UK extractive industries. This was first accepted by members at the UK EITI MSG last year and it has now been accepted by the EITI board:

EITI civil society organisations are normally expected to affiliate to Publish What You Pay (PWYP), an offshoot of Global Witness (GW created PWYP in 2002). Some NGOs, one a former affiliate of PWYP in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are nonetheless now applying directly to Oslo for associate membership of the EITI. This may also lead to opportunities for them to apply independently of PWYP for EITI board membership (for more on PWYP’s selection criteria for EITI board membership see here).

The EITI, as is evident from the above, is evolving. It might subsequently be worth keeping a closer eye on it in years to come.

Martin Brown

University of Sussex

Nicknamed the ‘bulldozer’, Pombe Magufuli is fast becoming a proverbial knight in shining armour just weeks after he was sworn-in as the fifth president of Tanzania. His radical approach to public service reform, economic austerity and anti-corruption is being hailed across the African continent and has been a subject of viral memes on twitter.

A day after he was inaugurated, for example, the president took an unannounced and unguided tour of one of the national hospitals, and finding it in a shocking state – with patients sleeping on the hard floor and vital diagnosis machines broken – fired the board and acting director there and then (see here). In another surprise visit by Magufuli’s new Prime Minister, Kassim Majaliwa, to the port in Dar es Salaam, it was discovered that taxes amounting to 40 million USD had not been paid. The president immediately suspended the Tanzania Revenue Authority’s (TRA) Commissioner General and had him arrested together with five other top TRA officials.

Magufuli has also banned business class travels for all public officers except the President, Vice President and Prime Minister, introduced significant cuts in tax exemptions and replaced the often lavish national independence celebrations with a nation-wide clean-up campaign. He has promised zero-tolerance for corruption and ordered the creation of a special court for corruption cases (see here).

These unconventional methods raise some interesting issues concerning the fight against the endemic graft that has dogged the African continent in the past 40 years.

One argument is that when corruption is entrenched and normalised, as it is believed to be the case in Tanzania, such an abrupt intervention is critical. The radical approach can introduce ‘uncertainty’ in the corruption-prone environment, breaking the shared expectations and resulting predictability that sustain corrupt systems. The chain of corruption can be broken, albeit temporarily, when potential wrongdoers are unable to anticipate the type of response their actions will elicit from the top political echelons.

Additionally, the abrupt crackdown on corruption can instil fear among the ‘usual’ offenders working in cahoots that often straddle the private sector and government. This is already happening in Nigeria where the fear of the new president, Muhammadu Buhari, is said to ‘be whipping [the] Nigerian bureaucracy into shape’ (see here). Indeed, instilling fear was one of the important weapons in the anti-corruption arsenal of Singapore under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew. When he was quizzed about his fear-instilling methods, Yew once remarked: “Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”

But Yew seemed to understand that healing the cancer of corruption requires a careful combination of fear, voluntary compliance by public officials and broad-based community involvement. In addition to raising salaries of public officials, there were efforts to encourage the Singaporean public to be vigilant and to take full ownership of the war on corruption. Incidentally, the consistent show of political will and commitment to fight corruption is a decisive short-cut to winning the hearts and minds of the citizens to rally behind an anti-corruption campaign. A genuine commitment to tackling corruption by a country’s number 1 can inspire a badly needed citizens-led anticorruption movement and become the single most important bulwark for the islands of integrity or the so-called ‘positive-outliers’ in Tanzania.

The challenge is, however, that the political conditions that exist in Tanzania may not be conducive for the Singaporean approach to anti-corruption. Lee Kuan Yew could literally go after anyone suspected of corruption without risking his political career; he could afford to step on big toes and still remain in power. Being the most popular figure in his People’s Action Party (PAP), and in Singaporean politics in general, Lee was relatively unencumbered by political machinations, a luxury that Magufuli on the other hand can only dream of. Although he is credited with being one of the most consistently well performing ministers, is relatively young (55 years old) and has a chemistry PhD, Magufuli was not his party’s (Chama Cha Mapinduzi) first choice. He owes his nomination to the alleged fall-out between the party’s top brass and the former Prime Minister, Ngoyai Lowassa, who was more popular and viewed as the strongest contender.

While Magufuli’s impressively ‘clean’ record during his tenure as the minister of Public Works demonstrates his commitment to integrity, and lends credence to his anti-corruption drive, one wonders whether he has the political wherewithal to take on the big wigs of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) when the need arises. He might be ‘clean’ but some influential members of the CCM may have put their hands in the cookie jar; can the president remain true to his word and crack the whip without fear and favour?

For someone who started so brightly, showing prejudice in an anti-corruption clampdown can cause more damage than was ever inflicted by all the former presidents combined. It has the potential to generate more cynicism among the ordinary Tanzanians who have pinned their hopes on him to take the country forward.

In the context of multi-party pluralism, the war on endemic corruption can never be a one man show. The new president needs to find strong allies within the CCM and the bureaucracy. The former is more urgent. Intra-party collective action against corruption will sustain the momentum and ensure that other arms of state, especially the judiciary, take anti-corruption much more seriously. But where the incentives for intra-party anticorruption collective action will come from is, so far, an enigma. Why should the CCM be more committed to the war on corruption now than ever before?

Moletsane Monyake, University of Sussex

Strange things have recently been afoot in the normally sanguine world of German party finance.   Back in October 2014 the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a new(ish) right-wing party, mutated in to a gold selling business so as to claim extra funds from the state (see here). This was quickly followed in December 2014 by ‘Die Partei’, a satirical party with one MEP (see here), deciding that it would take the oddness one step further. It began selling money to help it access public funds to which it otherwise wouldn’t have been entitled (see here for an English language summary of both cases).

By December 2015 the sublime was turning in to the ridiculous. The AfD was once again involved, although this time unwillingly. Despite a year marked by internal strife (see here), the AfD was flying high in the polls. Indeed, for the first time in its history it was registering around the ten per cent mark as it looked to make the most out of not only the Eurocrisis but also Europe’s summer of immigration trauma (see here for more on the AfD’s rise).

The AfD’s successes were clearly too much for some of its opponents. Members of ‘Die Partei’ (yes, them again) and a number of small, left-wing activists launched a campaign on the internet (see here) that had the potential to financially ruin the AfD. Not content with opposing the AfD’s policy package they called on the AfD’s opponents to donate money to the party.   How, one might ask, would donating money to a party potentially cause it problems? Surely the more money a party has, the easier it is for it to carry out its daily affairs? No, not always.

How was the ruse going to work? Anti-AfD Germans were asked to donate small amounts to the AfD – the numbers in play couldn’t get much smaller, in fact, with 10 cents being the amount mentioned. They were asked to do this online, by transferring money via companies such as PayPal or Sofort (simply a German version of PayPal). Every time a payment is made via one of these providers, the receiver (in this case the AfD) has to pay a commission. This varies from provider to provider, but Der Spiegel (Germany’s largest weekly newspaper) reported that the costs tend to be between 0.9 and 1.9 per cent of the value of the transaction (see here). On top of that every transaction comes with a flat fee – again this varies, but it’s generally between 25 and 35 cents.

So, in theory, a 10 cent donation could cost the AfD roughly 30 cents. The AfD would be able to claim back some of this via the system of state subsidies, but not enough to cover the transaction charges. For every Euro that the AfD raises it gets 38 cents from the state – it doesn’t take an expert in arithmetic to work out that that would still leave the party well short of being able to cover the costs that come with these donations.

On the one hand, the AfD reacted in a reasonably relaxed fashion to the threat of death by donations. It claimed, for example, that it had good relationships with the likes of PayPal and Sofort and that the contracts it signed forbad charges from being levied that were greater than the transactions involved. If that’s true, then the AfD is indeed covered and has nothing to worry about. Indeed, a few clever-dick activists trying to bring a party down can often help a party make itself look like it’s the victim of a campaign, and that can go down very well with potential supporters. A case of all attention being good attention, maybe.

On the other hand, if all really is that sanguine then one wonders why the AfD has threatened to take legal action against those pushing the initiative. The background to these concerns is quite complicated, but in essence the AfD is worried about hacking campaigns and data management. Come what may, the party made it clear that if any of these ‘campaigns’ are seen to help the AfD’s opponents undermine its online presence, then the AfD is clear about who it will be holding responsible.

Huffing and puffing to one side, all of this might ultimately be of little real relevance anyway.  By 11 December it was being claimed that the princely sum of Euro 167.23 had been donated in this fashion, hardly the stuff of which financial ruin is made.  But, for a party where money is very tight (see here for more on that), it’s clear that the insurgency is nonetheless an awkward distraction.

The sight of Germans ruthlessly applying rules in absurdum is in and of itself mildly amusing, but these cases also tell us a little more about what we should and shouldn’t expect from party-funding debates. The German party-funding regime is short on neither laws nor judicial attempts to interpret them, but that hasn’t saved it from parties and activists trying  to ‘play the game’. Party funding regimes never stand still as rational actors do their level best to get the most out of them – or indeed to attack their opponents via them if they can.

In and of itself it is unlikely that the AfD will fall apart at the seams on account of these donations, but it does show us that creative souls will use loopholes to further their own interests.  Sometimes in a decidedly comical way, but sometimes in potentially more serious ones.  One good reason to keep an eye on developments in funding regimes (in Germany and beyond) in the years to come.

Dan Hough

In August 2010 the then Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, announced that he wanted to empower “an army of armchair auditors” to scrutinise the work of his department.  This move would signal the beginning of a “new era” of government transparency and accountability with any outgoings of £500 or more being publicly revealed online. The wider world was subsequently going to have access the nuts and bolts of how in excess of £300m (the departmental budget in 2010) was being spent.

And this was clearly only meant to be the start of things.  David Cameron’s Conservative/Liberal Democratic government embraced this new world of openness and accountability, opening up information on a whole range of things from crime statistics to spending commitments and from contract awarding to hospital waiting lists.  This new openness would not only help to clamp down on waste, but it would also drive both efficiency and responsiveness (see here).

Furthermore, the government promised to develop a system of performance management based around a range of performance indicators.  The 200 plus indicators would be an ideal tool for the public to hold those with entrusted power to account.   This was, or so it seemed, bordering on the revolutionary.  Engaged citizens would be able to unpack and dissect the minutiae of government performance and the age of Sir Humphreys pulling the strings facelessly from behind a cloak of anonymity would be behind us.

How, then, has this veritable army of auditors faired?  And how has government and the process of governing changed as a result?  The answer to the first question gives a very strong steer as to the answer to the second; impressive though the brave new world sounds, the army has not so much organised a mutiny as never really enrolled in the first place.  There are one or two notable, and quite specific, exceptions (see here and here), but as Ben Worthy and Robyn Munro have argued, there are plenty of good reasons why one can’t really blame prospective armchair auditors for falling at the first hurdle.

A recent report by the Institute for Government (IoG) outlines three specific reasons why this drive to increase people power has at best moved forward only patchily.  The IoG boils it down to poor quality data, poor communication (understood as inadequate explanations of what the data means) and very little evidence that there was any great public willingness to use the system in the first place.

Whilst the third of these is something that should probably not surprise us too much – minus the pay of a fully trained auditor it can’t be that big a surprise that people aren’t queuing up to be amateur forensic accountants – the existence of the other two problem areas are disappointments.

The IoG, to be fair, was quick to recognise that some government departments (and service providers more broadly) did do their best to be open with both data and explanations of it, but some appeared to take their obligations anything but seriously.  Data was often simply not available, or when it was available it was in a format that was unsearchable or very hard to actually use in any straightforward sense.  A pile of .pdf documents the size (if printed out) of a hefty doorstop might well fulfill transparency obligations, but it is hard to claim that all but the unhealthily obsessed can do anything with these things.

Over the course of the last few months a number of websites and apps have been developed to help make data-sifting easier.  And, more specifically, to enable the interested external observer to uncover potential malpractice.  If you’re interested in public procurement data, for example, then http://www.spendnetwork.com/ is a useful starting point, while https://openspending.org/ claims to ‘track and analyse public financial information globally’.  In November 2015 the University of Sussex and Transparency International UK took a closer look at what these websites and apps might offer, convening a focus group to try and unpack their usefulness.  15 students on the MA in Corruption and Governance plus 3 PhD students on the SCSC’s PhD programme sat down to see what they could make of them.  The students looked to try and uncover potentially interesting transactions or processes in a number of the UK’s local authorities.  They used the websites to help them, as well as conventional search engines such as google.  The aim was to see if an interested observer could find anything of note.

The outcome was predictable; the students found little of genuine substance.  On the one hand, the data remains both patchy and largely impenetrable.  The numbers mean little to those who don’t understand the context, and there is effectively nothing out there explaining why decisions were made, specific contracts awarded and government took the form that it did.  On the other hand, unless an armchair auditor possesses the talents of Lieutenant Colombo, the patience of a saint and, perhaps most importantly, some sort of tip or piece of inside information to help them head in the right direction, then he or she won’t be able to make much progress at all.  As one of the MA students, Koya Rahman, noted “I spent 90 minutes looking hard at all of this, but, in truth, if I’d been at home and not part of this experiment I’d have given up after 10 minutes”.  Who can blame her?

Perhaps it is nonetheless too soon to be so downbeat about people power in this area.  The rise of the open data agenda and the existence of a number of initiatives to both broaden its scope and streamline the processes that underpin it mean that things may look very different in the near(ish) future.  David Cameron, to be fair, does seem to have embraced the agenda rather more than many of his international contemporaries.  But, the devil really is in the detail, and unless both the IT infrastructure of the public sector can be improved and the accessibility of the data is enhanced then armchair auditing will remain the privilege of the (very) few.

Dan Hough

Colonel Sambo Dasuki, the former National Security Adviser to the Federal Government of Nigeria, is waiting to go on trial for corruption in the richest, most populated and many think the most corrupt country in Africa. This story (see here for more) is not in the same league as the case of Sani Abacha, a former corrupt General and President of Nigeria who stole billions, but it is still serious.

Dasuki was high on the new(ish) Nigerian president, General Mohammadu Buhari’s, hit list, and one of the first people to be charged with corruption when he took office in April. Buhari made it clear to the world that security and corruption were his first two national policy priorities and he wanted to be seen to act on both early on. That led to Dasuki quickly being put under house arrest.

Dasuki had played a prominent role in helping to destroy public faith in Nigeria’s once internationally respected army and it is to be hoped that the trial will shed more light on exactly how he did this. Buhari certainly thinks that Dasuki knows much more about large-scale corruption in the military and the theft of money than he will admit. This is money that was meant to help ordinary soldiers fight terrorists in the North-East of Nigeria, on the borders with Chad and Cameroon.

For his part, Dasuki had been the senior military officer responsible for advising President Goodluck Jonathan about national security and spending on the armed forces.  It appears that he had advised him of the need for a massively increased budget for the army in 2014 – all well and good, but, again, where precisely did all that money go? There is very little evidence that it was spent on new equipment, much needed weapons or vehicles (see here).

Dasuki’s job had also been to explain what the military were doing to fight terrorism, and, as became increasingly clear, to push any blame for failure on the part of the government on to others such as the main opposition party, the All Progressive Congress (APC).  The APC are dominant in the northern states of Nigeria where Boko Haram are most active and so are very much in the middle of Nigeria’s gruesome battle with a hard to pin down terrorist group. The then government’s (and Dasuki’s) argument was that the military could not defeat Boko Haram while APC Governors in the northern states supported Boko Haram and undermined President Goodluck Jonathan. This was a serious accusation that was understandably not taken lying down by the APC whose reputation was on the line in the run up to a national election in March 2015.

It also looked as if Dasuki may have gained traction in the UK with his defence of the Nigerian military’s obvious failure in the north, and his thinly veiled accusation against the APC. In the UK Parliament, for example, Andrew Rosindell MP asked the then UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, how the UK was engaging with Nigeria’s leading opposition party (the APC).  This followed a debate in parliament in which Labour MP Sandra Osborne sought to examine allegations of links between the APC and Boko Haram (see here).

Was the APC part of a conspiracy funded by the northern states? Lai Mohammed, APC Press Secretary (and now Minister of Information), came to London at very short notice in September 2014 to argue the opposite case in the UK Parliament (see here for his reply to Dasuki). Dasuki’s pamphlets, meanwhile, describing how Boko Haram had increased its’ operations, were distributed by Nigerian Consulate officials in Portcullis House during Lai Mohammed’s speech.  Quite where this will all end is not clear, but it is a story that is worth following.  The trial is ongoing in Nigeria and this episode will tell us more about how the new president intends to deal with serious corruption allegations in the military.

Martin Brown

MA Student

Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption (SCSC)

Just before the Lesotho parliament was dissolved ahead of the general election in February 2015, the then (and still) Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) provoked a social media storm by suggesting, in parliament, that government would have to pay off the interest free loans that legislators had taken as part of their benefits. This, he was quoted as saying, would ensure the MPs who fail to retain their seats do not default on their payments. It would also act as an added incentive for legislators to agree to the dissolution of the then 2 year old 8^th parliament.

At face value, this seemed to defy all political logic coming from a man cast as venal and greedy in both mainstream and social media circles. One would have thought the scandals in which he was embroiled would make him a fraction careful with what he says as he tries to endear himself to the public and hopefully do well in the election. But again, the whole thing seemed to fit the narrative that the DPM was playing a political trick of sorts, and trying to make friends on both sides of the political aisle as he projects himself as being concerned about the welfare of legislators regardless of their political affiliation.

Be that as it may, the political punditry was that the socio-economic and political dynamics that currently exists in Lesotho would not allow any government to ‘spit on tax payers’ by making such hefty payments on behalf of financially reckless individuals. There would be little to no room for political negligence, arrogance and gluttony of the sort that characterised previous regimes. Fast forward 8 months, the pundits are left with an egg on their faces; all but 2 of the 120 legislators who took out loans of M500, 000 (34750 USD) each, have now had these debts fully settled by the government of Lesotho.

Morally reprehensible

The fact that the government has forked out M32 million on behalf of these individuals is a clear indication of the level of rot that has for so long hindered this country’s progress. We are aware of the notion that this may not qualify as ‘corruption’ because government fulfilled its legal obligation as the guarantor, to pay off the loans in the event that MPs were defaulting or likely to default. But so far the evidence that MPs are in fact failing to service their debts has not been presented. For all we know, many of these guys are back in parliament while some are currently gainfully employed elsewhere. Even if these were not the case, it is morally objectionable for the country that consumes so huge a chunk of donor funding, is failing to reign on the spread of HIV/AIDS, violent crime, the bourgeoning graduate unemployment, crumbling basic education and healthcare systems and has its public infrastructure reeling in the shocking state of disrepair, to spend over 2 million USD writing off the debts of individual legislators.

It should be borne in mind that access to the interest-free loans does not reflect the generosity of the banks, but that of the Lesotho government towards the people who are, by national standards, already earning much higher than the majority of the tax-payers. These are the people who on top of their salaries have each a daily lunch allowance of 250 Maloti (18 USD). To put it in perspective, each MPs weekly allowance for lunch is equivalent to an average monthly salary of Lesotho’s textile factory worker.

What makes this even more morally apprehensible is that the “honourable” members who have failed to do the honourable thing of paying their debts are now said to be “entitled” to more interest-free loans. In other words, a bad debt is written off and rewarded with access to more debt, again with government as the guarantor. This is happening in the context in which 50% of the population lives below the poverty line, and where the government is said to be unable to sponsor all students admitted at various higher learning institutions, particularly the National University of Lesotho. These payments are being effected by the very government leaders who, as recently as April this year, complained about the fiscal irresponsibility of the previous administration, and as a result slashed the budget by approximately M3 billion with capital budget suffering the most.

Institutionalised corruption

Sadly, this is not the first time the legal framework is being used to justify the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. As recently as 2006/7, the Lesotho government invoked an obscure regulation to allow statutory employees to purchase its luxury cars for less than 5% of their current value; pricey Mercedes Benz cars were bought for as little as M4000 /280 USD (which is equivalent to what each MP earns as an allowance for lunch in 3 weeks). That caused a huge public furore in the urban areas and partly accounts for the modest performance in the 2007 snap election of the then recently formed All Basotho Convention (ABC).

Any law, policy or regulation that enables a government to do what the Lesotho government did in 2006 or inherit the private debts of individual legislators as it is currently doing, is intrinsically ‘corrupt’. Indeed as Dan Kaufmann argues, corruption includes “some acts that may be legal in a strict narrow sense, but where the rules of the game and the state laws, policies, regulations and institutions” have been shaped in ways that privilege private interests (of especially the ruling elite). In other words, corruption is not only confined to the output side of the political process, wherein officials violate laws, regulations and procedures for private gain. It encompasses the building and maintenance of a corruption-prone legal framework in order to promote and protect the interests of the political elites and their cronies. It is this type of corruption that cripples the entire political process and renders democracy meaningless for a majority of ordinary citizens.

The foregoing notwithstanding- and herein lies the conundrum- even if Lesotho’s laws explicitly prohibited these actions, there are grounds to suspect the government would have still gone ahead and executed its corrupt intentions. There are several incidences in which state officers blatantly ignored the laws when their private interests were at stake. Recent examples include refusals by the former Communications’ minister and the current commander of Lesotho Defence Forces (LDF) to vacate offices after they were legally removed. The LDF has defied several court orders in the past and recently failed to comply with the ruling to release the soldiers suspected of mutiny and hold them in open arrest. An audio clip that airs regularly in one of the local radio stations features the former Minister of Energy, Meteorology and Water Affairs (and currently, minister of Defence) as stating that ‘It DOESN’T MATTER WHAT THE LAW SAYS; no one has the right to prorogue our parliament ”. These are the indicators of the level of systemic corruption that characterises the political economy of Lesotho. In this country, laws and regulations do not mean much (if anything) when they are seen to clash with the interests of the government of the day or powerful individuals within it.

This is the context within which political pundits ought to have interpreted the DPM’s bold contention that government ought to inherit the debts of individual legislators. Seen in light of systemic corruption, that behaviour was not irrational or ill-advised. The suggestion came from the place of assurance that in a country where corruption is not an aberration, but a system in its own right, he would not suffer major political consequences. It is the same assurance that underpins Prime Minister Mosisili’s decision to spend- without flinching- a whopping 15 million (1 million USD) buying Principal Secretaries out of their contracts because his cabinet is uncomfortable working with senior officers who were employed by the previous administration.

The fish rots from the head down

With an ever increasing access to media, more Basotho, especially the youth, are becoming aware of the extent to which public power is being used to advance private interests. This has severe consequences. Firstly, it is eroding institutional trust and the sense of patriotism especially amongst the youth, at an alarming rate. It is becoming more and more difficult to convince young people to love and serve their country; why should they love the country when the political leadership doesn’t care about it?

Secondly, this rampant political corruption is directly linked to poor service delivery, vandalism and misuse of public resources (cars, telephones etc) by public officers and the increased normalisation of petty corruption by street level bureaucrats. The sharp increases in retail bribes for drivers’ licences and number plates is indicative of the fact that most public officials, taking cues from elected leaders, are (mis)using their positions for illicit financial benefits. This can only end when political leaders get their act together and resolve to collectively stop this rot from spreading further and wrecking more havoc on Lesotho’s fragile economy and politics.

Moletsane Monyake

University of Sussex