Focus on the civil service where graft is most lethal rather than in politics where it is most politically attractive
Over the
last three weeks, government of Uganda has done what was previously
unthinkable. First, police rearrested the ringleaders in the scam in the
ministry of Public Service that saw our country lose close to Shs 500
billion paid to ghost pensioners. Second, it subjected them to rigorous
interrogations, which led to the recovery of 256 titles of properties
they had accumulated. These properties have an expected value of over
Shs 800 billion. Third, it froze their bank accounts and placed caveats
on their assets. Fourth, police is initiating the process of recovering
the money by confiscating the properties and handing them to government
for auction.
There is
also little evidence that our democratic process can fight corruption as
effectively as the public mood would demand. This is because
politicians, even when elected, possess interests different from those
of their constituents. In most corruption fights, politicians seek their
personal benefit first (if someone can bribe them too) and the public
interest later. And when they do, as they often pretend in our
parliament, it is to use corruption as a platform to score political
points against the ruling party (as in when opposition is fighting the
NRM) or for intra party struggles for power (as when NRM fight among
themselves). In fact it is this political posturing on corruption that
has made it difficult to fight the more cancerous form of this malaise
in our country.
To combat
corruption in today’s Uganda, one would have first to give less priority
to political corruption (by this I mean the corruption of powerful NRM
politicians and their immediate cronies) and focus on that corruption
that is purely criminal. Political corruption helps NRM maintain its
electoral coalition. So there is little incentive on the ruling party to
cut the hand that feeds its electoral machine. However, not every
corrupt act is politically sanctioned or functional. Most corruption is
by civil servants, high and low. And this is the most lethal as it makes
public goods and services difficult to deliver. NRM can have a vested
interest in fighting this form of corruption – and one reason the
struggle against the thieves in the pension scam seems to be working.
Although
civil service (or nonpolitical) corruption may constitute 90 percent of
all theft of public resources, it is politically unappealing to fight
it. This is because the public thinks, quite wrongly, that the biggest
theft is by the powerful politicians like ministers. Yet experience
shows that most money is stolen not even by top civil servants –
permanent secretaries, under secretaries, directors and commissioners –
but by “small people”; accountants, nurses, head teachers, clerks,
auditors, district administrators, procurement officers etc. But their
names don’t excite public passions and don’t make good news headlines.
Take the
case of the “Temangalo scandal” that dominated news headlines,
parliament, the presidency and public discourse for four months in 2008.
It involved Shs 11 billion. NSSF bought 100 acres of Prime Minister
(then security minister) Amama Mbabazi’s land at Shs 24 million per acre
against an evaluation of Shs 18m. Even the worst critic of Mbabazi
would say if he cheated NSSF at all (and I insist he did not), his theft
would have been a meager Shs 600m. The civil servants in the ministry
of public service stole almost Shs 500 billion and we hear only a
whisper but never a shout at it in the press or parliament.
The
confluence of politics with fighting corruption has made the debate on
the problem lively and heated. It has also made it seem fairer as the
targets are the powerful. But it has also made it less effective in
generating the results our country needs. First, because it tends to
target regime cronies, it induces the president and the other arms of
the state to come to the defense of the accused – hence generating more
noise and less action. Second, it diverts attention from the more
insidious form of corruption that is widespread among many civil
servants where NRM and the president can be mobilized to support the
effort.
I suspect
the struggle to recover stolen billions by confiscating the properties
of the thieves in the pension scam is on track to success because there
are no powerful politicians involved. So the NRM has little political
interest to defend in protecting them and everything to gain in pursuing
the case. If NRM can be persuaded to focus on fighting this form of
corruption (the non political one) it can realise some measure of
success. Yet this strategy cannot win public support. This is because
the masses are driven, as Karl Popper said, by the sentiment for justice
rather than the articulation of factual truths.
Handcuffing
a powerful minister, especially one related to the President, and
sending them to jail, even if he has stolen only Shs 1 million, seems a
more just thing to do than arresting an accounts clerk in a ministry who
has stolen Shs 100 billion. This is because punishing an accounts
clerk, even when he has stolen billions instead of a powerful minister
who has stolen millions, seems like catching the little flies and
letting the big bugs escape. The public desires to see action against
the powerful, not those considered weak. Here we see the contradiction
between what public sentiment may demand and what better public policy
would achieve. Until we overcome this bias, the fight against corruption
will not peak.
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