By Chola Mukanga
The election
of the
Patriotic Front has thrust the
fight against corruption firmly back on the national agenda. An agenda built
around the commitment to “zero tolerance” on corruption in all areas of
national life. President Michael Sata set out this direction in his inaugural
speech to Parliament
[i]:
I am sounding a timely warning that my Government has taken a zero
tolerance against corruption in both the public and private sectors. Those who
allow themselves to engage in corruption must know that they are taking a
serious risk and that once caught they will be prosecuted irrespective of their
status or position.
This new
direction presents both an opportunity and challenge. It is an opportunity because
we now have a clean start that appears to be winning accolades, as illustrated
by the timely decision by the European Investment Bank (EIB) to resume funding
to Zambia. The EIB observed, “We are pleased to note the public statements by
President Sata and his Government, declaring the fight against corruption a key
priority…. [and] the numerous institutional changes aimed at strengthening
corporate governance; including the changes in leadership at both ZESCO and the
Anti-Corruption Commission….In view of these developments, I am pleased to
inform you that the European Investment Bank has decided to lift restrictions
on EIB’s activities in the public sector in Zambia.”.
It is a
challenge because we are still in the embryonic stage of this renewed quest.
Zambia is awakening from an MMD era of unprecedented scandals in our young
history. The inevitable question on
every Zambian’s mind is: will this renewed fight succeed where others have failed
so miserably?
Defining
success
The answer
to that question naturally depends on what is meant by “success”. What are we aiming
for? The new Government defines it as “zero tolerance”, meaning no corruption
taking place in every sphere of Zambian life. But it should immediately be
obvious that though the slogan is necessary in galvanising our attitude (and
gaining international confidence) it tells us nothing about what realistically we
are working to. Indeed, there’s a danger that without a proper defined criteria
of success the slogan may be hostage to fortune.
This is
particularly the case because the multifaceted nature of corruption
[ii] means it will always be here. It is part of
the total depravity of man. More importantly even if we are able to heroically
reduce it to zero, it may not be financially or economically sound to do
so. By all means let us fight for zero
corruption, but at what cost? Therefore there’s a pressing need in this early
and enthusiastic stage the new struggle against plunder to develop deliberate
and specific targets that the new Government should be aiming for to allow
citizens to properly hold it to account on the level of progress being made.
As a
starting point we should be clear that measures of success must be specific and
not the vague promises we were accustomed to under the failed and corrupt
regime of the past. Statements such “corruption is reducing” or “that
institution is back on track” won’t do. Let us be clear about what sort of corruption
we have in mind and where our efforts to should focus on. Zambia has very little financial resources. We need to
be intelligent in our fight against corruption.
Economic intuition suggests that it is more efficient that the fight
against corruption focuses initially on areas
of corruption which may be more harmful in terms of growth and equity. Corruption
is likely to be more detrimental where it is likely to disproportionately
affect the poor compared to the rich, leading to larger income inequalities
over time. Corruption is likely to be most harmful where it “hits people twice”
e.g. in hospitals, schools and police. Corruption is likely to be more damaging
to society where it affects those institutions that are there to prevent
it. Defining these areas as specific
targets to reduce corruption would refocus our struggle and deliver tangible
results that can be verified by all Zambians.
The indicators of success must be measurable.
The problem with the MMD fight against corruption is that it had no real agreed
measurable indicators. How do we know corruption has reduced in Mwansabombwe?
How do we assess whether the civil service has increased in corruption? Key
parameters must be agreed that are routinely measured and tracked by a specific
publicly accountable body. These
benchmarks on national performance against corruption would include local and
sector based perception indicators, financial leakage, number of arrests, timeliness
of corrupt cases in court, etc. Such data should be kept in public and
routinely updated document. In short, underpinning the struggle against
corruption must be a clear public service agreement supported by hard and
routinely collected data.
Of course it is not good measuring things that we are unlikely to do
anything about. So it is vital that such targets are based on policy goals that
are achievable and realistic. Realistic indicators of
success give impetus to Government to strive to bring them about and allow the
public to be justified in their disgust when such targets are not being met.
People will not care about any outcome that they know full well will not be
delivered. We must move from hollow promises of a better tomorrow to more
timely and realistic commitments e.g. “traffic police bribery reduced by 10% by
July 2012”. These are the sort of
milestones that we desperately need.
Prerequisites
for success
Of course measuring success is only the beginning. Ultimately success in
fighting corruption will depend on Government developing the necessary
conditions to breed success. This is particularly crucial in the embryonic
stage. There are three key indispensible conditions.
First, there’s need for sustained
policy credibility. The fight against corruption must be a truly
people driven agenda. A “Zambian Project”, not just the vision of the person in
State House. One of the tragedies of the Mwanawasa administration is that the
fight against corruption was personalised through Presidential Executive Orders
which rightly conveyed the impression that it was a personal creation designed
to fulfil whatever Mr Mwanawasa had in mind. Creating private presidential armies
to fight corruption is not good governance, no matter how successful those
armies might be.
Similarly,
reliance on foreign donors for such an important struggle undermines Zambia’s
sovereignty. Let us fight corruption, but let us not sell our country in the
process. The new PF government deserves applaud, for now, for not reinstating the Task Force and shunning
foreign funding in this area. Zambia must always bear 100% the burden of
delivering justice because it is the foundation of our society. If the
foundation is on borrowed capital, will the house stand? The Government must
now go beyond that by creating an adequate legislative and political framework
that will truly put Zambia on a credible and sustained path towards a low
corruption and high growth equilibrium.
The second
condition is financial sustainability. The fight against
corruption must provide value for money over the medium to long term. It is
true that there's no price that can be put on rule of law and justice in general,
but we have to remember that the fight against corruption wont by itself deliver these things. It is only
a part, albeit an important one. That means that any fight against corruption
must, like all forms of policy, be undertaken within the context of an
efficient and cost cutting government, with an eye on spending money where it
is most needed.
Over the
last two decades Zambians have seen initiative after initiative undertaken
without being sufficiently underpinned by effective cost benefit analysis. This
has led to grossly inefficient arrangements whose costs, if ever quantified,
would outweigh benefits. Zambia is a country that relies on donor funding and
external borrowing to feed its people. Each K1 being spent must rightly be
evaluated against competing alternatives. More importantly, if the fight
against corruption is to succeed the supply of funding must be sustainable. It’s
the irony of life that we need money to stop money being lost. A new strategy
for corruption must therefore be underpinned by the need for delivering
solutions that that are economically efficient.
The third
condition is that the fight against corruption should be forged as part of a holistic and broad struggle
for development. Corruption
is best addressed as part of a wider debate on what we think are key constraints
to Zambia’s development. The days of long running editorials on one person are
a distraction to real debate, which should focus on how we can make our
institutions better and indifferent to the personalities of the day. Zambia's
number one problem is that we have a "poor institutional framework” that
exists only to serve the rich and corrupt elite. A credible institutional
framework goes beyond simply tackling corruption. It is about introducing
stronger governance and accountability structures. Participatory democracy and effective decentralisation are among
those things that have been empirically verified to work. We simply cannot
expect to win the fight against corruption if power is unnecessarily
centralised.
Delivering
success
When the
conditions are right, it becomes easier to take forward policies that deliver
results. A top priority is that we need new policies that encourage greater detection
of corrupt activities. High
levels of detection act as a deterrence to would be perpetrators. In short,
information is vital in the struggle for corruption.
The prime
source of such information is
whistle
blowers. The existing legislation on
legal protection for whistle blowers unfortunately contains significant
deficiencies
[iii]
that urgently need to be corrected by the new Government. Although the
current legislation claims to provide for "a framework within which public
interest disclosure shall be independently and rigorously dealt
with", it is quite clear that the framework is particularly inadequate in
so far as it relates to investigating agencies. The legislation requires
investigating authorities to investigate themselves which clearly does not
encourage whistle blowing. Similarly, the current legislation contains no
monetary incentive or financial reward for whistle-blowing, further
diminishing of any prospect of whistle blowing.
The media
has an important role in disseminating information. The media such as
newspapers, television or radio are useful and often necessary methods of
publicising corruption to the electorate, to empower the community to punish
corrupt officials. A key proposal
therefore is that new Government should formally privatise Government controlled papers
. Empirical
evidence
[iv] demonstrates
that a government dominated press is positively associated with corruption. A
free press provides greater information than a government controlled press to
the public on government and public sector misbehaviour including corruption.
The best way to encourage corruption therefore is to ensure Government owns the
television and owns the main newspapers. World over, it is accepted: if you
want to know how serious a Government is in fighting corruption, just look at
how much media it controls.
Further media
reforms must include having an established and trusted media outlet in the
community and using media that can best reach the community based on its
education level. Our local radio stations should be supported as avenues for
greater and more localised detectors and publishers of malpractices. Though
Zambia continues to see a significant rise in local radio stations many
continue to face serious administrative and operational problems. Local advertising revenue is not sufficient to
make such radio stations sustainable. Hence there’s need for Government to do
more to supplement funding in these areas. A viable community radio station
fund is needed.
Of course the citizens can only do so much and that is why Watchdog institutions
exist (Auditor General, ACC, DEC and Police Service) to help detect such vices.
Unfortunately, these institutions are some of the most corrupt institutions in
the country. Evidence increasingly shows that where auditors and policing
authorities are corrupt, initiatives to tackle corruption, indeed monitoring in
general, becomes toothless. It is for this reason that high priority should be
placed on improving their capacity. This will include not just monitoring the
monitors better but creating incentives within these organisations to avoid
corruption e.g. through greater competition for jobs and improved pay packages.
It cannot be denied that these Watchdog institutions have generally been the
most underfunded in the country. As Director General, Rosewine Wandi recently
noted, "the ACC faces several challenges such as lack of adequate
funding from the Government to enable us execute our operations effectively...”
Simply put the institutions are
broke.
Improved
detection must be accompanied by rapid improvement in prosecution. The current approach to
prosecution is costly to the tax payer because cases take a long time. We need
a new judicial process for convicting corrupt criminals that is swift and
definite. No point of having long prison sentences and good detection, if you
cannot actually convict people efficiently and at minimal cost to the tax
payer. A corruption fight without an efficient court system has little
deterrent effect on corruption and is therefore a pure social cost.
The
Government should seriously consider setting up Special Corruption Courts, if
necessary on a pilot basis. These would constitute specially selected judges
and dedicated courts to exclusively handle corruption and economic crimes
related cases. The experiences of establishing special corruption courts can be
seen in Pakistan, Philippines and Kenya. There’s no reason why Zambia cannot be
learn from such countries on pitfalls to avoid. Many international
organisations support such initiatives and indeed recently Nigeria has
initiated[v] a similar pilot for
two years. The approach is to use a unified general system with judges who have
already acquired expertise in handling corruption cases. These could be
restricted to look at cases involving more than K100m.
The final jigsaw is increased
punishment. There is need for introduction of stiffer penalties for corruption. Firing people is not enough to
dissuade them from corruption because often such individuals are fairly mobile
and would be able to find another job. Stiffer penalties in form of longer
sentencing periods are needed. The problem at present is that not only do cases
take long to resolve, but when these cases are concluded people serve short
sentences. For justice to work, it is critical that people are not just
punished but are
seen to be punished.
This policy prescription is in line with the stated intention of the President
in his inaugural speech to Parliament
[vi]:
“To restore public confidence in [the fight
against corruption], the PF Government shall amend the Anti Corruption
Commission Act to introduce much stiffer penalties for corruption offences,
re-instate the abuse of office clause … ”.
Crucially, the three policy elements – detection, prosecution and
punishment – must be treated as a unbroken trinity. Policy initiatives that
utilise a combination of these three can prevent corruption by drastically
increasing the expected cost for being corrupt (increasing the probability of
being caught engaging in corrupt activities, and increasing the punishment for
being corrupt). Detection on its own is ineffective, because the individual
must face a punishment for being corrupt. Similarly, increasing the incentive
to stay honest has no effect when the probability of getting caught is too
small.
Zambia has a remarkable new political opportunity to wage a successful
fight against corruption. This vision requires translating the President’s
stated intentions into practical ideas to deliver a less corrupt Zambia. We
won’t achieve this unless we are clear about what success looks like; the
environment that will help create that success; and the practical initiatives
needed to bring it about.
