According to an August 16 report by Fana Broadcasting Agency (FBA), three federal institutions, namely, the federal Attorney General , the Federal Anti-corruption Commission and the Federal Police Commission have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to join forces in order to vigorously combat corruption in Ethiopia.
The MoU was signed by Deputy Attorney General Gedion Timotios, Federal Anti-Corruption Commissioner, Ayelish Mulualem and Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Tekola Ayifokiru. It was also noted that the launching of the joint action against corruption in the country was meant to make the ongoing process of democratization and good governance a success. This will be done by institutionalizing the fight against the evils of corruption and bad governance instead of fighting it in a dispersed and uncoordinated manner as it was the case until now.
In a recent radio interview with a broadcast station, an official of the Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission (EACC) said that his agency is trying to register the properties of officials of the Ethiopian government in accordance with the mandate it was given by law. The official admitted that it is facing a huge backlog because it was unable to deal with the number officials concerned estimated to be in the tens of thousands and this requires time and patience to revise or re-register their properties.
A long time has indeed passed since the EACC pledged to register the properties of government officials some of whom might have left their jobs following the recent political shakeups in the country. The most important point the official revealed was that PM Abiy had already registered his property and that he is ready to do so if asked once again. This is indeed a radical departure from past practices and an encouragement for the EACC to take bold actions against corruption in all places of the government hierarchy.
In the past, top government officials in particular were reluctant to have their properties registered for many reasons. Corruption had reached such a high level that some of them were afraid of exposing themselves to public scrutiny. They did everything in their powers to delay the registration process or ignore the issue altogether.
The EACC was discouraged from doing its job properly. High-level corruption thus remained in the shadows of a kind of conspiracy of silence until the current political reforms made things relatively more transparent. The full story and extent of government corruption in Ethiopia is not yet known to the public.
We may sometimes wonder why and how the EACC, which is the official arm of the government to fight rampant corruption, has so far remained silent while the country has been shaken by revelations of grand corruption and the alarming exposure of the Auditor General’s office about massive financial mismanagement in many government institutions where money was running like water and spent left and right over many years some which could not be traced.
Now that the situation is more conducive to transparency and the media are free to expose any case of corruption without fear of reprisal, the EACC is expected to be more aggressive to discharge its mandate and live up to public expectations. The media on their part should play their role of public watchdogs instead of engaging in the misplaced debate whether or not there is grand corruption in Ethiopia or passively echo the official narrative .
At one point in the past, government authorities were quoted as saying that corruption in Ethiopia was not a serious problem as it is in elsewhere in Africa. Ironically enough, the ongoing reform process was launched shortly after the statement was broadcast over the state radio. A number of alleged corrupt officials were subsequently detained soon afterwards. It is to be recalled that bad governance and corruption were the chief catalysts that ignited the popular pretests more than a year ago and led to change of administration within the EPRDF entity.
Although there is now a new policy put in place to pardon past mistakes and restart anew, this does not mean that corruption has become tolerable or that corrupters would be allowed to go free. A number of former government officials are now facing the law for their alleged involvement in corrupt activities in connection with the GERD and other state-controlled institutions such as METEC.
This is presumably the tip of the iceberg and many corrupt officials are either in hiding or trying to avoid the long arms of the law. By its very nature, corruption transcends gender, ethnicity, class or profession. It is found everywhere and should be rooted out without regard to these considerations.
To tell the truth, the EAACC has not so far lived up to public expectations and the government needs to look for ways and methods of invigorating the relevant institutions instead of looking on with passivity or paralysis. Government institutions are ran with taxpayers’ money and as such they have the duty and obligation to present regular reports to the public about where public money has gone and what should be done to recover lost money or bring the alleged thieves before the law. The office of the Attorney General too has an equal duty and obligation to connect with the EAACC in this most important endeavor.
The media, public and private, have the professional duty to work passionately on investigating cases of alleged financial embezzlements running into millions if not billions and the corruptors who have been bleeding the nation dry in the last 27 or so years. The media have the professional duty and obligation to make the truth known to the public and facilitate the judicial prosecution of wrongdoers. It would be up to law enforcement agencies to deal with the legal aspect of the matter based on media findings.
One of the factors that are prohibiting the media from engaging in this task was lack of press freedom. Nowadays, the media both private and state-owned are obsessed almost entirely with politics and sensational issues. There is a total fixation on politics and gross neglect of economic and corruption issues that are hurting the silent majority. It is up to these media to set the agendas and not the other way round.
The most important public concerns are at present economic crisis, bad governance and corruption. The government is so overstretched dealing with dozens of issues related with peace and security, that corruption is finding a comfortable refuge while it is continuing to do its dirty job in silence. One of the problems in the past was official denial of corruption. Nowadays this has changed into a kind of conspiracy of neglect.
If the media are concerned with public welfare , they should balance their reporting by giving equal focus to non-political agendas such as the economy, social crisis, bad governance and corruption. There is a kind of mismatch between public and media concerns. Most people are currently worried by economic issues such as unemployment and inflation to name but only two of the most formidable foes. The media are predominantly interested in why we may call conflict-reporting while they should turn the spotlight on the most burning issues of the time.
There is a private human rights watchdog in this country. The Ethiopian Human Rights Counsel which is a public watchdog against human rights abuses has rendered tremendous service to the good of the public under the most difficult and repressive conditions in the last 27 years. It has now emerged as the most reliable source of information about such abuses although the government sponsored parallel organization known as the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission was largely engaged in denial of abuses or thinly veiled pro-government advocacy or defense.
It is a pity that the nation does not have a dozen or so independent anticorruption watchdogs to protect the properties of the nation against the rapacious thieves that bled it dry in the past and might still be doing their dirty job in silence as the media spotlight is focusing elsewhere. The need to establish as many anti-corruption watchdogs as possible is not only indispensable but also timely so that they can join forces and make a difference in stamping out rampant corruption.
Together, they might form an anticorruption campaign that can bite and bite the right offenders, exchange experiences and discuss strategies. That would also create the opportunity for the EAACC to start doing its homework and tackle the backlog that has accumulated over the years.
The recent MoU signed between the above three federal institutions should therefore be seen in this light. However signing the MoU by the three federal agencies cannot in itself do the job of uprooting corruption from the most critical sector of government and the economy. They have to start taking practical action to win the confidence and trust of the public. Conditions seem to favorable for such initiative.
It was recently reported that the property registration of top government officials, including that of the Prime Minister would soon start. This is good news but the results will largely depend on how the three federal institutions would function smoothly, speedily and decisively to make accountability the central pillar of the reform process without which democracy would only remain a pipe dream.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 25 August 2019
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
