Go to just about any public institution and the procedure is more or less the same. The choice is between the hard-and-cheap or easy-and-expensive. This is the reason Nepalis give a damning reckoning of their public sector. Transparency International, the Berlin-based global corruption watchdog, reckons Nepal is the most corrupt country in South Asia bar Afghanistan. On Thursday, TI’s Global Corruption Barometer (GPB) pointed out the endemic corruption in Nepali political parties. In the region, only Bangladeshi political parties give a poorer accounting of themselves.
There is no doubt that the systemic corruption in Nepal needs to be dealt with in its entirety. But that is a tall order in a country where the chief custodians of democratic values, the political parties, have been cooking their books for years. (Another TI survey earlier in the year concluded that no major political party in Nepal maintains transparency in its financial transactions.) It is an open secret that Nepali political parties have an unholy relationship with most of the business establishments. This is reflected in the fact that though the names of the top VAT dodgers in the country have been known for quite some time, no party at the helm of successive governments has dared to punish them. It is indeed hard to burn the hands that feed you.
While in office, politicians extract hundreds of millions in bribes in the awarding of lucrative contracts. Some of the cut undoubtedly makes its way into the party coffers. Outside the Valley, the political parties openly collude to share the spoils in proceeds from development works. The party currently at the helm of the government is yet to account for the billions of rupees it took from the government in the name of absent combatants.
Perhaps before striving to clean up the whole government machinery at one go, the prime minister would do well to push for the implementation of his much-peddled ‘zero tolerance policy to corruption’ in his own party. No other party needs gloat. They are as deep in it. They cannot expect people to believe their tall promises on clean governance in Nepal when their own houses are downright dirty. The change, as they say, starts at home.
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