The integrity reform agenda is not the government’s priority yet. Experiences of other countries have shown that such reforms have been crucial in combating corruption and institutionalizing good governance. A major hurdle in effecting integrity reforms has been a reluctance and lack of commitment among the governments in emerging democracies such as Nepal. If we review our past efforts, what becomes clear is that we always tried to empower or reform one particular state institution while completely overlooking reforms in other sectors.
We empowered the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) in 2002 by amending the law which led to a spree of midnight raids into houses of 22 revenue officials. But we failed to initiate reforms in other NIS institutions like judiciary, police, bureaucracy and others. This led Nepal’s overall anti-corruption movement down the drain with no substantive results at hand even after years of intervention. Instead, corruption is on the rise. In today’s integrated governance system, performance of one state organ is affected by the functioning of other state organs. The success and failure of one state institution is largely dependent on the performance of other NIS institutions as well.
INCLUSIVE REFORMS
The NIS encompasses key institutions (legislature, executive, judiciary, civil service, media, private sector, civil society, anti-graft bodies, police, etc) that contribute to integrity, transparency and accountability in a society. These all NIS institutions are expected to combat corruption as part of their integrated and consolidated crusade against the abuse of power, malfeasance and misappropriation in all forms. Sheer dysfunctionalism of any one of these pillars explicitly affects the performance of other NIS pillars as well. This is where our anti-corruption efforts went wrong over the last two decades because of our failure to strengthen the national integrity system in its entirety.
Our past leaderships did not have the political audacity to internalize and embed the concept of national integrity in our laws, governance policies and administrative processes because of which corruption has become “a way of life” rather than a fact of life. As corruption is a symptom of underlying problems, not the problem itself, the trends that sustain it should be properly addressed through institutional reforms. Establishing a sound and effective national integrity system aims at identifying systemic loopholes and underlying problems to make all NIS institutions function in an integrated way. The concept of a single national integrity system sees other organs of the state as “a coherent framework of institutional set-up” glued together with a common goal to tackle corruption and bad governance.
With experiences of countries having effective integrity system, it is proven that corruption can not be fought by mere “stand alone reforms”. Because of this reality, integrity reform has been accepted and applied as a form of diagnostic treatment to corruption and poor governance in many countries. Nepal’s integrity system reforms are long due and are very urgent. Existing integrity pillars are functioning in isolation perceiving each other as opponents. The government too has adopted “sporadic reform” approaches rather than holistic reforms in the whole integrity system. To put it flatly, Nepal’s integrity system is weak due to patchy reforms, unstable politics, political protectionism, myopic governance policy and lack of political will.
The Global Integrity Report 2009, released by a US-based INGO Global Integrity, concludes Nepal’s overall integrity as ‘weak’ with 67 scores among 65 countries assessed. Nepal has got weak ratings in anti-corruption and rule of law, administration and civil service categories. We have received very weak ratings in election integrity with 58 score, government accountability with 57 score, administration and civil service with 63 score. Political financing regulations are non-existent. While a Right to Information Act does exist but its implementation is ineffective. Yet Nepal is out of “margins of error”, the reports states.
Thus, improving integrity is a challenge and a need because strengthened integrity system is a real medicine for transparency, accountability and corruption control. If all the state institutions perform their delegated functions with high integrity and responsibility, a shared goal of containing corruption can be achieved. And at the same time, it should not be our understanding that mitigating corruption is the only and sole duty of the CIAA. This ought to be perceived as a shared responsibility by all the NIS institutions.
STRATEGIC PLAN NEEDED
Over the past decade, we perceived that the CIAA and the National Vigilance Center as the sole agencies to deal with corruption. This is where we misconceived that corruption could be controlled by the efforts of merely one or two anti-graft bodies. Experiences have shown that single-agency approach to corruption control in absence of strong political commitment has already failed in many countries. Thus, the effectiveness of NIS primarily depends on the political will of the government in fighting corruption, its level of governance and policy contexts.
Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong have been successful due to their governments’ strong commitment and effective governance policy in fighting corruption. On the other hand, countries such as Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Philippines and Vietnam have faced more obstacles. Countries with an effective NIS perceive corruption as a ‘high risk, low reward’ endeavor, because those who engage in corrupt practices are likely to be caught and severely punished. The anti-corruption policy within an effective NIS should focus on preventing corruption rather than simply investigating allegations of corruption. Conversely, a country with an ineffective NIS like ours perceives corruption as ‘low risk and high reward’ undertaking and focuses more on investigating existing corruption rather than preventing it. Consequently corrupt offenders are less likely to be identified and penalized.
State campaign against corruption hopelessly nosedived despite the CIAA efforts due to weak integrity system in Nepal. We have a number of concrete examples of how a fragile integrity system posed a threat to good governance and anti-corruption endeavors in the past. The CIAA lodged a number of corruption charge-sheets against ex-ministers, police generals and secretaries at the Special Court. But to our dismay, the court scrapped some of the big corruption cases on grounds of timeframe and mere technicalities. This is how a fragile national integrity system led to failure pushing the CIAA campaign down the pan.
This has made us pretty clear that “one sector reform” will not trigger substantial impact on controlling corruption unless we introduce sweeping reforms in all NIS institutions to enable them to function equally. And controlling corruption should be viewed as a shared responsibility and give up our inherited-notion that the CIAA alone is enough to root out corruption in Nepal. Corruption cannot be reduced only through reforms in the CIAA if we concurrently fail to strengthen integrity in judiciary, executive, police, private sector, media, civil society, among other NIS institutions.
Finally, my deduction is that the government should formulate the national integrity plan as a long-term strategy to reform and strengthen overall integrity system which eventually ensures sustainable fight against corruption and bad governance. Only when the NIS pillars are made to operate effectively, vibrantly and responsively, will corruption levels go down and our long-cherished aspiration for good governance come closer. Or else, our corruption control efforts will just wind up as failures the way they have been to date. Therefore, the government should start mulling over phase-wise reforms through long-term integrity plan and strategy which can indeed be a lasting recourse to containing corruption and bad governance.
Related story
NIS Industry Outreach Meet organized in New Delhi
_20210418110925.jpeg)
-1200x560-1779450784.webp)
