Crippling corruption

By Salama A Salama

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The thing that got to me most in the defective blood containers case recently is how everyone seemed clueless about what exactly had happened. For weeks, everyone talked, and the picture remained vague. Who did what, how, why, and when? We had no idea. Were the regulators at fault or the regulations? Was it the Health Ministry's fault or the hospital's? No one seemed to know.

Now that the case is under investigation, the less said about it the better. But I want to talk a little bit about the implications. This case is further proof that the government is oblivious to the scale and methods of corruption. Corruption is becoming a happy place where people come and go and make deals and prosper. Only when disaster strikes do we all get worried.

We lack standards for good governance. And we have failed to introduce institutional reform. This is why corruption is spreading at such a rate. For example, everyone seems to have forgotten about Article 95 of the constitution. This article states in no uncertain terms that People's Assembly members aren't allowed to buy or sell from the government or rent it anything during their tenure in office.

In the defective blood containers case, the breach was clear. A People's Assembly member who monopolises a certain type of merchandise was selling his products to the Health Ministry and its hospitals and no one seemed to worry about it. Someone, somewhere should have pointed that out but didn't. A committee supervising the conduct of parliamentarians should have brought this issue to light but didn't.

Let's admit it. Many People's Assembly members are selling and buying things from the government in broad daylight and no one is saying anything. This is a case of political corruption, the worst type of corruption, worse even than administrative corruption of which we have plenty.

In political corruption, laws are often written to promote the interests of certain people, thereby offering a democratic veneer to inappropriate transactions. Administrative corruption -- to distinguish between the two -- is when red tape is so complicated that bureaucrats are tempted to abuse their power to grant or withhold licenses.

A paper on corruption by an economic research centre in Egypt says that Egypt is ranked 70 among 163 countries on the scale of corruption. The same paper notes that Singapore, which 10 years ago was counted among the world's most corrupt countries, has managed to turn things around to become one of the least corrupt nations on earth.

Singapore did so through transparency and probity, leadership by example, decent salaries to public servants, and speedy prosecution of corruption cases. Singapore has set up an independent national political committee dedicated to stamping out corruption. This committee investigates cases of suspected corruption and takes appropriate measures.

The worst culprits of corruption are usually parliamentary bodies and political parties, followed by the police, health, and education. This doesn't mean that we need to abolish political parties and the parliament. But we need to clean up their act. When parties rely on businessmen to finance their activities, corruption is likely. When regulators are unable to see through the alliance of wealth and power, things will get out of hand.

Let's do what Singapore has done. For starters, let's form an independent higher political committee to combat corruption.