Sunday Times 2
Corruption redefined: Promotion supersedes prevention
View(s):
Failure in prevention of bribery and corruption has been the evident reality since 1962. Some law changes have been made leading up to the current Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC). There is no dispute that the whole order has failed and that corruption continues to be rife and endemic with the COVID-19 crisis being harvest time for corruption.
The continued failure in the prevention of corruption now operates within the purview of the Task Force. Therefore, failure of prevention of corruption at this point and in this way, is attributable to the Task Force more directly than to the inability of the CIABOC. The CIABOC is now hard put to deal with this COVID-19 dimension of the problem of corruption than ever before. The CIABOC might as well close down and save the dwindling State coffers.
It has now become incumbent to examine a trend towards promotion of corruption than prevention of corruption. Corruption has been defined as practice which causes loss to the Government and benefits private interests. When the loss is caused by the Government itself, in defiance of its own rules, and is to benefit those in the Government and its own officers, instead of the people, the problem of corruption takes on a variant manifestation. This then is the very definition of promotion of corruption. That is perhaps the reality of the situation. Promotion of corruption has overwhelmed the emerging scene.
To unravel this tangle, some quotations from Leo Tolstoy will help. These excerpts are taken verbatim from his work, ‘The Resurrection’ – pgs 76, 77. ‘Military service always corrupts a man, placing him in conditions of complete idleness, that is, absence of all intelligent and useful work….. Such a life has a peculiarly corrupting influence… where a civilian would not be able to help etc.’
The issue is not of promotion of corruption versus prevention of corruption. No issue arises with loss and benefit — the key words in the local legal definition of corruption. The issue here is that promotion of corruption, loss and benefit is both caused by the Government and accruing to the Government. Promotion of corruption now runs on a ‘rentier’ system. This practice only takes in the benefits — the rents — without the effort of production and distribution of the produce. Now this is possible, particularly with donations that come in from elsewhere, with no effort here.
The recent Afghanistan debacle is the sharpest illustration where the monies which came in lavishly from the US were defrauded by local hands. The disaster in Afghanistan came in by this reason primarily than by other reasons. Failure to build a nation as investors envisaged, was plainly due to corruption. Over here, there are the likes of jogging tracks through which some can creep in. Loss is caused by the winners; benefits are drawn by the same, in a dramatic reversal of the law against corruption.
The parallel between the Afghan and the local situations is tantalising — only the intensity differs. The creeping ways and means of corruption are no less similar for law and order in this country, which is the specific focus here. Corruption finds it space, ways and means for its spread in an insidious method on its course. Inequality helps. Disparity among the people, between the rich and the poor, the controllers and the controlled, are the thriving ground for corruption. Exploitation is by the rich on those deprived and indigent. Loyalty holds with the few bonded by corruption.
Intelligence or want of acumen is the other factor which goes with corruption, says Tolstoy and adds. “Qualities with intellect are not easy virtues to come by, they need to be developed. Inasmuch the intellect aptitude is advanced, corruption is not easy.” The resignations by eminent persons, as now experienced here, are but just the conflict of intellect with want of intelligence. Their decision to leave office is not just personal, but is in acquiescence of a congenital and hazardous problem which has confronted them. Want of intelligence did not help contain them. In contrast, the military mind stands by commands, not from intelligence to contend with the commands. To this military mind set, the need is for more of that kind. Militarisation is just the buildup of that, for this mind cannot cope with intellect or relate intelligently with the others. The CID, too, gets regimented in this process. The Attorney General is of no consequence.
Inequality is at the base, with the difference and separation of those in control to the near complete relegation of the others. Justice, morality and ethics are nowhere on the scene. Religion and even the law do not help; now their dignitaries just look the other way. Nation building is not even subscribed to. When the Government thus promotes corruption, disregarding the AR and FR meant for checks and balances, little wonder that corruption becomes a way of life for public servants.
(The writer is a Retired Senior Superintendent of Police. He can be
contacted at seneviratnetz@gmail.com< – TP 077 44 751 44)