LAHORE, Nov 25: Former Bangladesh foreign minister and Chairman of the Transparency International advisory council Dr Kamal Hossain says that opportunities were created for corruption in the context of two transitions which were taking place in South Asian society.
"Transitions from a colonial state to a post-colonial democratic dispensation, and from a bureaucratically-managed planned economy to a free market economy created opportunities for corruption," says Dr Hossain.
Delivering a keynote address at the three-day moot on 'Combating Corruption in South Asia', he said many strategic decisions needed to be taken by the states as they moved towards democracy.
The former foreign minister wanted governments to enhance legislation on political funding and disclosure to help combat the menace of corruption. "The overseeing bodies and independent courts should be endowed with adequate resources and skills and the power to review, investigate and hold the offenders accountable."
He also urged the governments to implement adequate 'conflict of interest' legislation, including laws that regulated the circumstances under which an elected official might hold a position in the private sector or a state-owned company.
He said that candidates and parties needed to have fair access to media. Standards for achieving balanced media coverage of elections must be established, applied and maintained.
He said that political parties, candidates and politicians should disclose assets, income and expenditure to an independent agency. Dr Hossain said that international financial institutions and bilateral donors must take political corruption into account while deciding to lend or grant money to governments. "They should establish sensitive criteria to evaluate corruption levels," he added.
The former foreign minister said that there were striking similarities in the mode of corruption throughout the Saarc region. He said that the injection of black money in the electoral process had major say in the success of candidates.
Referring to a recent study in India, he said that nearly 50-60 per cent of the MPs in India were big landlords. "They always think in terms of making money by getting favours done illegally."
Dr Hossain said that most of the non-political elites in Andhra Pradesh interviewed for this study tended to attribute the injection of criminality in politics - the use of professional thugs to hustle up votes, the role of black money in elections, and vote fraud - to this generation of Indian politicians.
He said in recent years innovative initiatives to combat corruption had been taken in India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These include new institutions such as the Abuse of Authority Investigation Commission in Nepal, the National Caretaker Administration in Bangladesh, and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in Pakistan.
He said that judicial activism of the Supreme Court and resort to public interest litigation were significant developments in India which were also being emulated in some neighbouring countries. -APP
