* This article also appeared in The Sunday Times.
There is no doubt that the shooting of Mphwiyo has generated a lot of interest, fear
and anxiety amongst Malawians. If truth be told, what happened and is still
happening in this case is something that most of us only thought was only made
for the cinema or some Hardly chase thriller. Usually when we hear of
shootings, it is about robbery or some trigger happy police officer was
strictly following the shoot to kill order but not the Paul Mphwiyo type of
shooting.
It thus comes as no surprise that a lot of Malawians and donors are
following the issues with keen interest. It is totally understandable that the
news continues to dominate Newspaper front pages even after weeks since it
happened. As the news unfolds, there has
been numerous theories and counter theories on what exactly led to the
shooting.
One thing though has been
consistent: someone, within the government system was involved in some fishy
business. And this was not a once off thing, but something that has been
happening over a period of time. It is with this in mind that news about ACB and the fiscal police starting
investigations on the civil service struck me.
While Some people have lauded the
institutions for the
investigations, it is my view that these institutions do not deserve any credit
for this. Rather, serious questions ought to be asked as regards their
efficiency. Ladies and gentlemen, here
are institutions whose primary responsibility is preventing corruption and
other financial crimes yet all they do is to wait for the crime to happen and
start chasing shadows. Worse still in most cases such cases are lost because by
the time they come in the culprit may already have destroyed the key evidence.
Just for information sake, this is not the first time huge amounts have
been siphoned off the tax payers purse. Few years ago, some people were arrested for being found with over
400 Million Kwacha in their bank accounts. Although arrests were made, the
nation is yet to hear the conclusion to that particular case.
Yet the mere fact that this happened
should to have alerted the ACB, the
fiscal police, the auditor general’s office and indeed the accountant general
in whose department the said crime was committed, to tighten up the loose ends,
open serious and credible investigations on the civil service and not wait for
a the Mphwiyo case to start whining.
Surely the mandate of ACB and fiscal police must go beyond prosecuting
but also includes preventing corruption and other financial crimes. In any case
apart from the deterrence, what else do we benefit for jailing someone who in
any case has already stolen our money and drank on all of it? Does it not sound
like a forestry officer who stands on the road confiscating charcoal bags in
the name of checking deforestation when the tree he was supposed to protect has
already been cut. In which case, confiscating the charcoal would in any case
not bring the tree back to life.
Frankly, I find most of the institutions that we have set up to check
abuse very reactive and thus failing to live up to their mandate. I am sure
that had the ACB, the fiscal police, the National audit office taken keen
interest in the earlier case I have alluded to above, the Mphwiyo case might
not have happened.
Launching numerous investigations now, to me sounds like some waste of
more money on top of that which was already stolen. My point being that the fiscal
police and the ACB could have done much better by simply being proactive and
not wait for some complaint or some shooting to start probing the civil
service. Institutions like them need to have the mandate to probe corruption or
financial irregularities even where nothing is being suspected. Waiting for the
donors or the government to push them to carry out investigations is opening up
themselves to undue interference from those directing them to do the same.
In the same spirit, the government needs to strengthen institutions like ACB, the National Audit Office and FIU.
The FIU for example since it has a privilege to access our account information
from the banks, need to be given the mandate to investigate and recommend for
prosecution suspected cases of financial crimes. It would also of immense
benefit to Malawians if these institutions would act in the same way as
auditors do. Auditors do not audit an organization just because there is
something wrong suspected but they would also audit just to check on levels of
compliance to standards within a system.
It may sound expensive and a waste of money yet in my opinion this is the
only way through which financial crimes and corruption can be checked. Probing
the civil service just because there is a case at hand is not good enough. When will the ACB and the
fiscal police look into the accounts of most of these civil society
organizations, when will they check the NGOs. Will they also wait for some high
profile financial mismanagement issue to be exposed. Institutions mandated to
check abuse must learn to be proactive if we are to make any headway in the
fight against corruption and abuse of public funds.
It may be argued that it would be wrong, to check companies or
institutions just for the sake of it. Well, in my view, it is also wrong not
to take interest in the operations of
various public companies and institutions until when corruption has taken place.
Thus, while it is good to launch the numerous probes into the civil service
now, a more proactive approach to issues would help us a lot. A stitch in time
saves nine so they say!
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