By not reacting to their rating by Transparency International as “the most corrupt entities” in the country, the political parties have silently endorsed the verdict. This silence is unexpected given the publication of the report on eve of November poll. As for people who have long regarded parties and corruption as synonymous, this was stating the obvious. Parties may still dabble in the ‘who is more corrupt’ debate, but TI’s message is loud and clear: All are in the same boat.
Corruption has taken such a big toll in Nepal that it won’t be surprising if someday soon the global anti-corruption watchdog names us the most corrupt country—TI’s 2013 Global Corruption Barometer rates Liberia and Mongolia in the world. We are already the third most corrupt in South Asia after Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Why is Nepal getting more corrupt every year? Do common people abet it? This piece will highlight some apparent but less-discussed factors of corruption and suggest remedies. First let’s discuss why political parties hold the distinction in the corruption index. [break]
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A political party functions like a parallel government. Just as there are ministries in the government, there are various departments within parties. Consider CPN-UML. The third largest party of the erstwhile CA boasts of Department of Foreign Affairs, Department of Health, Department of Local Governance and Physical Resources, Department of Law, Department of Publicity, Department of State Affairs, Department related to student wings and sister organizations, to name a few.
There are similar portfolios within Nepali Congress and UCPN (Maoist). These departments headed by party office bearers formulate plans and programs to be implemented in the wider political sphere. They conduct programs virtually every day and hold conventions from district to central levels every few years, for which they need millions in cash—for logistics andfood and accommodation of cadres. They have to bear the expenses of office bearers in charge of these departments and pay thousands of full-time cadres. Where does the money come from? Leaders point to levies and donations from party members and “well-wishers.” But a close scrutiny suggests otherwise.
Political parties exploit the loopholes in state policies they formulate while in power. They appoint loyalists in key positions so state funds can be misused and state power abused for vested interests. They mobilize local cadres to bag lucrative development contracts. When this is not enough, they turn to underworld actors. They take noted gangsters into the party fold and protect them in return for monetary gains. No wonder UML supporters posted the bail for Parshuram Basnet, the central committee member of UML’s youth organization, serving a sentence on a money laundering case. Basnet’s public admission that he would be languishing in jail if it were not for UML speaks of how UML had been using him as a source of funding. We may as well be prepared to hear of Madhesi People’s Rights Forum supporters paying the bail for Ganesh Lama, another gangster under judicial custody in the same case.
Evidently the patrons of these actors are hurt when the state takes actions against them, when they are in trouble or when they do not serve the party’s interests. KP Oli’s sympathy for gangster Dinesh Adhikari when the latter was assaulted in a gang fight earlier this month, his advocacy of Basnet’s innocence and his recent remark that Tribhuvan University’s Vice-Chancellor Hira Bahadur Maharjan, a UML loyalist, must work according to UML’s interests, suggest the same.
The third source of party funding is businesspersons and entrepreneurs. Parties turn blind eye to their misconducts and allow them to cheat people. And precisely because they cheat and indulge in misconducts, they can donate to the parties. This is the reason political parties are mum when water suppliers, gold entrepreneurs, transport syndicate, gas distributors and dairy operators openly cheat consumers. As the government remains a silent spectator to such wrongdoings, people have no option but to become part of the same nexus for survival.
Nepal is perhaps the only country where annual budget—which is supposed to provide relief for common people—comes as a source of panic. People begin to worry as early as June that the budget will accelerate inflation. Ours is perhaps the only country where salary hike of less than half a million government employees, becomes the sole basis for price hike in utilities, education fees, house rents, vegetable prices and labor wages, among others, making people’s daily lives extremely hard. So a teacher is in private tuition when he should be teaching in classroom; a journalist has to work for an NGO on the side by compromising on his integrity; a grocer adulterates food grains and edible oil; taxi and micro buses won’t bother to give you change. Since political patronage alone can ensure that these misdeeds go unpunished, these people tend to seek political protection.
Can this vicious cycle be broken? Can political corruption be minimized? It can. But first the parties need to dissociate themselves from underworld elements. Then they can begin by making public details of their funding, expenditure, and income through regular audit. One reason behind people’s frustration with the parties is that they are opaque in their dealings.
The business people claim they have been extorted, the parties say donations are granted voluntarily. Parties need to tell people the truth. If they abide by Election Commission regulations, they can regain some credibility. EC regulations make it mandatory for every party to submit income/expense details every six months. It also has the provision of cancelling a party’s registration should it fail to abide by the rule for four consecutive years. If the parties come clean, the state can reward them for their honesty.
A number of western democracies provide grants to political parties to fund some or all of their political activities in a bid to control political corruption. Sweden, Germany, Israel, Japan, Finland, Norway, Canada, Austria, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Denmark among others have introduced schemes of public subsidy or public funding for political parties.
The question is: Will such schemes be viable in a cash-strapped economy like ours? Compared to all the deleterious effects of corruption, if such a scheme can make the parties walk the right path, the investment will be worth it. After all, ultimately, the burden of corruption has to be borne by taxpayers. In the absence of any state funding, they are going to milk the state dry anyway. Corruption is a threat to democracy. We can ignore it only at the cost of becoming another Liberia or Mongolia in the next few years.
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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