Dealing with corruption as an issue in the Presidential Campaign

“The modern commissions on corruption have developed many methodologies of ensuring effectiveness of their workings. For example, the old commissions, as it exists in Sri Lanka, often get the officers for doing enquiries from the policing service.”
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By Basil Fernando

(November 30, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) For the first time in a presidential election campaign, the issue of corruption has come to the very forefront of the 2010 elections. One of the candidates has already promised that taking measures for the elimination of corruption will be one of the major priorities of his program. The very recognition of the problem is of historic importance.

Any serious discussion on measures to eradicate corruption in Sri Lanka need to address three separate problems;

A: the law relating to bribery and corruption is itself as it exists at present suffer from many limitations.. The offences that constitute corruption need to be more clearly laid down in order to facilitate any process of attempt to deal with corruption by criminalizing corruption and thereby dealing with it through the criminal justice process.

B: the definition of offences itself would not suffice, as the mechanism through which corruption control is presently carried out in Sri Lanka is itself very inadequate and defective. The commission relating to bribery and corruption is an inadequately developed institution as compared to many of the more developed institutions of a similar kind in the world today. Therefore, the problems of the commission itself need to be dealt with by a better law relating to the mechanism of implementation of the law, relating to corruption.

C: the overall framework of law affecting the basic rule of law framework in the country is at the moment, extremely defective, particularly due to the operation of the extraordinary powers of the executive president. The president, at the moment, has the power to suspend the operation of any of the laws by tampering with the process of implementation. For example, the implementation of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution has been paralyzed by the failure on the part of the executive president to ensure the appointment of the constitutional council. The avenues open to interfere with the legal process, directly or indirectly, could virtually jeopardize any attempt to deal with problems, such as corruption, through a legal process. Therefore, the loopholes in the constitution and the basic laws which allow for any form of interference with the basic legal structure of the country need themselves to be addressed if they are to be any effective system of corruption control .

The Offences Relating to Corruption:

The Sri Lankan law does not give a comprehensive definition to deal with every form of corruption, as is found in several other laws in other countries. The Sri Lankan law mostly concentrates on bribery, and has not kept up with the developments of law in defining every other form of corruption which affects governance.

Besides the wider definition of corruption, there’s also a need for specific laws, relating to bringing legal limitations on the state officers to restrict the possibility of misuse of government office for making illegal gains. For example, the officers who have the duty of making decisions on purchase of materials, on behalf of the government, should be strictly forbidden to be part of the companies that actually do the buying and selling of those very materials. A government officer who participates in the process of purchases can make illegal gains by becoming a part of another company which in fact does the related activities of carrying out such purchases. Similarly, there are many methods by which a responsible state officer could benefit by the decisions which are made officially, by being part of other companies or organizations through which the same decisions are being carried out. Many anti-corruption laws have developed comprehensive definitions of offences in order to prevent the possibility of such corrupt practices. These more developed legal definitions should be adapted into Sri Lankan law so as to prevent state officers from making undue benefits from the decisions they make or the knowledge they gain as part of government officers carrying out certain decisions on behalf of the government.

The Commission Against Corruption

The modern commissions on corruption have developed many methodologies of ensuring effectiveness of their workings. For example, the old commissions, as it exists in Sri Lanka, often get the officers for doing enquiries from the policing service. Police officers are seconded to the service of the commission for some time, and later may go back to the policing service again. This method has been found to be seriously defective, particularly in conducting enquiries into the policing service itself. As the enquiries into policing service affects in fact enquiries into all other services, the prevention of police officers being part of the enquiring officers, is a primary strategy that needs to be adapted for effectiveness.

By recruiting officers for work within the corruption sector itself, and providing the necessary trainings, and the future opportunities for development of carrier within the same organization, an independent unit can be developed which can make anti-corruption the professional activity of their lives. This way, professionalism develops as a separate carrier in dealing with corruption, and together with that, institutional practices, habits and knowledge about this activity become very much a part of the state apparatus. It also becomes a very important part of the knowledge of a nation.

Methods can be found for internal controls within the anti-corruption control system itself in order to ensure institutional development and institutional discipline within the same organization. This way, the development of moral principles, ethical principles and disciplinary codes develop within the organization and continues irrespective of other developments that may happen in political or other spheres. Complete separation of the work of an anti-corruption organization from the policing system will have better consequences not only for the anti-corruption agency, but also in developing a separate policing system which will be supervised from the outside on matters relating to bribery and corruption.

-Sri Lanka Guardian