Over the past few decades, the issue of corruption has attracted both academicians and policy makers. Corruption is recognized as a cancer on the bodies of individual countries. It is the single most powerful obstacle to stability and sustainable economic development. Corruption scandals involving political leaders & public servants have often captured world attention. Most of these scandals are as a result of the deteriorating ethical behaviors of political leaders and public servants who have indulged themselves into all sorts of malpractices motivated by short-term gain and greed. Now a days, the scope of corruption problems has expanded exponentially.
With a shared vision of global movement, a few individuals decided to take a stance against corruption and created Transparency International 25 years ago. Now reaching over 180 countries, the movement works to see a world in which government, business, civil society and the daily lives of people are free of corruption. In the words of Transparency International, Corruption is one of the greatest challenges of the contemporary world.
It undermines good government, fundamentally distorts public policy, leads to the misallocation of resources, harms the private sector, and hurts particularly the poor. Recently, the Corruption Perceptions Index 2018 (CPI) ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption using a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. In the index, more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, with an average score of just 43. Ethiopia scores 34 out of 100 and ranked 114 least corrupt nations out of 180 in the world.
But, there are many remarkable progresses that the Transparency International must consider about Ethiopia. For example, the efforts being taken by the Ministry of Revenue , especially in controlling the illegal movement of weapons, foreign currencies and other contraband commodities can be taken as the remarkable progress towards combating corruption in this country. Of course, like other developing countries, evidence of corruption is mostly common in Ethiopia.
Mainly in the departments related to land administration, revenue and Kebeles are most affected with corruption and favoritism. As most of the researches conducted on corruption, the key drivers of corruption in Ethiopia are poor governance, lack of accountability and transparency, low levels of democratic culture and traditions, lack of citizen participation, lack of clear regulations and authorization, low level of institutional control, extreme poverty and inequity, and centralization of authorities and resources.
In this regard, Assistant Professor at College of Business and Economics from Addis Ababa University Dr. Fenta Mandefro considers corruption as a two-way street: there are office holders who demand favor, and there are private agents who provide. As to him, public officials may ask a payment in return for their biased decision or service delivery. And private agents may offer payment for two major reasons: the first is in exchange for a promise to evade the law for their personal advantage or to improve their company’s competitive position at the expense of others.
On the other hand, individuals provide payment when the public official is unwilling to decide on the case with no defined reasons. In rational choice theory also, corruption is explained as the function of calculating, strategic, self-interested behavior. In this view, corruption is particularly likely to occur in situations of power asymmetry, where some individuals hold power over others. In this case, issues of good governance in Ethiopia are very important. As most scholars agreed, corruption is detected in the form of family and ethnic loyalties.
Above all, blurred distinctions between private and public interests, weak financial management, inadequate accounting and auditing, over-regulated bureaucracy, deterioration of moral and ethical values, and inefficient civil service systems have also been cited as the drivers of corruption, according to the Federal Ethics and AntiCorruption Commission. According to Dr. Fenta, high rent seeking activities, lack of capable leadership, unwillingness to serve the public, and weak systems of accountability are the key anticorruption challenges. Indeed, since Dr. Abiy Ahmed took office as Prime Minister, some corrupted officials are detained for deteriorating their powers for personal gains.
It is really important that the political leadership has been seriously committed to combating corruption, and that such high-level political commitment should be sustained. As to Dr. Fenta, the government must address the demand and supply sides of corruption. For instance, corruption is a complex political, social, and economic problem that involves those public officials and public servants who demand any form of an undue benefits from citizens and institutions while making decisions and delivering public services.
This constitutes the demand side of corruption. On the other hand, those citizens who are willing to negotiate their rights and/or are prepared to influence public decision makers and service providers through the provision of an undue benefit represent the supply side of corruption. In fact, the increasing problems will cause businesses to bankrupt and nations to collapse. Corruption destroys countries through several consequences. Corruption undermines government revenue, and limits the ability of the government to invest in productivity and vital social services.
This adversely affects government efforts to reduce poverty, Dr. Fenta illustrates. “Corruption distorts the decisionmaking connected with public investment projects. It encourages illegal operations in the economic activity. Investors will always prefer to establish themselves in less corrupt countries.” “Corruption discourages home grown private-sector development and innovation. Budding entrepreneurs with bright ideas will be intimidated by the bureaucratic obstacles, financial costs and psychological burdens of starting new business ventures.”
Thus, effective corruption prevention requires not only effective engagement of public institutions, public officials and public servants, but also citizens at large and their religious, social, and economic institutions. It is essential if the government states the role of each actor and provides a clear roadmap on how this can be achieved.
In addition, Dr. Fenta explained that international good practice learned from various successful countries, including Hong Kong and Singapore show that a single institution alone cannot fight corruption effectively across the public sector. Even in countries where anti-corruption commissions are independent, powerful and wellresourced, not only in terms of finance but also in terms of the required skilled human resources and technology, success has come from the interaction between and effective engagement with multiple public agencies.
At the heart of this is the recognition that corruption prevention and promotion of integrity is the responsibility of each public organization. Thus, leaders of public agencies at all levels in general and top leaders in particular, need to take primary responsibility for establishing a first line defense in fighting corruption and ethical misconduct, Dr. Fenta suggests. Addressing such organizational weaknesses is not primarily the responsibility of the Commission, but that of the heads of each public agency.
It is therefore the leadership of public agencies that can set the tone and define the culture in respect of anticorruption from within the organization. In this case, there are a number of international precedents which support this view. A key factor for Singapore’s success in combating corruption, for example, is that the primary responsibility for preventing corruption lies with the respective public agencies. The leading-by-example policy is a key factor of its anti-corruption strategy.
South Africa also relies very much on its public managers to maintain a culture of integrity in government. Hong Kong believes that maintaining organizational integrity through active engagement of public managers is the cornerstone of a clean public service and is essential to its sustainable development. Based on international good practices, the Commission introduced an integrated institutional corruption prevention approach, and has been providing technical and ethical leadership trainings to cabinet members, heads of agencies and technical support staff at the federal and regional levels.
But, it has not yet been effectively institutionalized to produce the desired result due to lack of an overarching national strategy; top leadership of public agencies have not owned due to limited commitment; and third instability and turnover of top leadership in various public agencies. According to Dr. Fenta, a successful fight against corruption demands political commitment at the highest levels. The best barrier against corruption is a wellfunctioning parliament.
The parliament should be the central institutions of power in a democracy, since they are the institutions in which the people have vested their power as citizens. The parliament should not be rubberstamp of the executive. Therefore, the role of members of the parliament in fighting corruption is absolutely central. They must undertake this task to ensure the general morality of society for a lasting peace and economic progress which vitally depends on honesty and trust.
The Ethiopian Herald May 18/2019
BY ZELALEM GIRMA
