The Bhadain bill: Adding more corruption to existing corruption
The official mission of the Ministry of Good Governance is to provide guidance and support for the enforcement of good governance, promotion of financial services and reengineering of public sector bodies to eradicate fraud, corruption, malpractices and irregularities in all aspects of public life and restore the national values of the country. Recently, in an address to the Bar Association, Minister Badhain confirming the above also indicated that the amendments to the Constitution, the Asset Recovery Act, and the introduction of The Good Governance and Integrity Reporting Bill, would allow the government to attack illicitly obtained wealth directly and therefore eradicate fraud, corruption, malpractices in our public institutions.
I was then prompted to ask the question “what is the root of these evils? What is the source of all the fraud, corruption, malpractices in our institutions that has given rise to unexplained and or illicit wealth?” The minister eventually replied that to answer the question, we should go back to the Independence and look at the beaviour and actions of politicians, how they have governed in general until now. What he omitted to mention to complete the answer is that we also need to look at how they, controlled, managed and interfered in our institutions.
This brings me back to an article I read in l’express titled “Réveille-toi ô mon île”. The author is obviously an admirer of Minister Badhain. In her ode, she makes reference of the cleaning of the Augeas stables, and I imagine compares the minister to Hercules, compares fraud, corruption and malpractices in our institutions to the manure of several thousand cattle accumulated over 30 years, and the minister’s proposed amendments and laws to the Herculean task of clearing up all the manure.
Unfortunately, this comparison doesn’t quite fit our situation. Firstly, the minister is not a Greek Demi God and secondly his proposed amendments and laws, designed to attack unexplained wealth, will only touch at the consequences of the fraud and corruption, and hence only serve to remove the stench of the stables whilst leaving the filth on the ground. A modern day Hercules would have approached the problem very differently. Certainly he would have cleaned the stables, but not without changing the style of management and administration, thus curing the mischief and the smell permanently at its source.
If we sincerely want to fight corruption then we must eradicate the cause. Seizing the ill-gotten gains of corrupt individuals, we only touch the consequences of corruption and leave the core intact. Unfortunately this is what present legislation does. What the minister now proposes is to remove some of our property rights from the Constitution so as to allow Executive controlled bodies to act and to confiscate the property or wealth of an individual, where no satisfactory explanation is given as to how the property or wealth was acquired. These proposed amendments, like the previous law, do very little to attack the heart of corruption, but instead facilitate confiscation of property without conviction, not because it is the proceeds of corruption, but because possession or control cannot be explained.
In their wake, these amendments add to the mischief they seek to cure by reducing the fundamental and constitutional rights of the citizens, such as the right to security of property, the right to silence, the presumption of innocence, and the rule against discrimination against any citizen. Our notions of democracy, separation of powers, and the rule of law will consequently be put into question.
To add insult to injury, in practice, these laws will usher in the protection of informers by institutions under the control of the Executive or its nominees in the form of an “Agency”, whereby either the agency or an informant can submit a report of unexplained wealth. This reminds me of the beginnings of The Ministry for State Security known as the Stasi. It was the official state security service of East Germany during the cold war and had been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies to have ever existed. One of its main tasks was to spy on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants, to put down any opposition.
The Ministry of Good Governance already has under its control the State Insurance Company of Mauritius Ltd, the Financial Services Commission, the Financial Reporting Council, the Competition Commission, the Office of Public Sector Governance, the National Productivity and Competitiveness Council, the Public Sector Efficiency Bureau, the Internal Control Unit, which give it vast powers over the private and public sector. The proposed amendments will over and above the existing powers create a state-controlled policing “Agency”, able to act beyond the usual constitutional protection of the citizen.
Some individuals are of the view that we should give these laws a chance and see how they operate in practice. I believe that it would be foolish and shortsighted to entertain such a dangerous experiment, firstly for reasons given above, and secondly based on the past performance and modus operandi of the Ministry of Good Governance. Recently, the minister amended the Financial Services Act to allow direct Executive and Ministerial intervention to name and direct an administrator in the BAI affair, resulting in the disorderly and disastrous demise of IFRAMAC and COURTS. This was followed by a dispute with the administrator, all at the cost of the tax-payer.
We are now forewarned that the minister has the capacity and power to change the law and intervene in the affairs of the Financial Services Commission or any other institution under his control for that matter.
So if we understand that the disease is corruption, which results in the symptom of unexplained wealth, and that the cause of corruption is the blatant and wrongful intervention of politicians and the Executive in public institutions, then any meaningful cure must stamp out this abusive interference. Attacking unexplained wealth will only serve as a temporary alleviation of the sickness. Thus it is very strange that the proposed laws and amendment allow for Ministerial and Executive intervention in the process of reporting on unexplained wealth and thereafter confiscation of property.
In effect, these proposed laws and amendments only purport to cure a symptom of the illness, with an injection of the same and a more virulent disease. Rather than removing all possibility of Executive abuse within our institutions, which has plagued this country for decades, and rather than passing laws that will prohibit the absolute control and direct intervention of the Executive in parastatal bodies which are the cause of the corruption, the Ministry of Good Governance, through this act, is adding more corruption to existing corruption, but this time with anti-constitutional force. It is, in my view, acting against its own mission statement.
Posted by Minority Voice
on Dec 1 2015. Filed under Economie, Featured.
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