ACB: You’re reacting, be proactive

Honourable Folks, it is amazing how the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has engaged the extra gear and made significant arrests in the wake of the looting at Capital Hill which has shocked Malawi to the core.

Some civil servants suspected to have had a hand in the shameless scam, through which a third of government revenue ends up in private pockets, have been arrested.

But all this hustle and bustle is a reaction, coming only after corruption had reached frightening proportions as exemplified by assassins’ attempt at the life of budget director Paul Mphwiyo last month.

It is only following the unprecedented public anger—the business community wondering whether they should pay tax to a government that could not contain the looting, the civil society threatening mass action if government did not clean up its house and donors expressing loss of confidence in the way government was handling corruption—that we saw the ACB waking up.

Now suspects are being rounded up one by one. The story goes that Capital Hill is no longer a pleasant place to go to if one has skeletons in the cupboard or stashed in the tummy of a doll. You just might be greeted with a search warrant.

But the arrests cannot be divorced from the political hullabaloo from the JB camp most likely meant to convince donors that government is very much in control of the situation.

The question is: should the ACB which is required by law to “exercise its functions and powers independent of the direction or interference of any other person or authority” be seen to go with the wind? The Bureau should be proactive, not reactive.

The Corrupt Practices Act empowers the bureau to probe–including tracking how the wealth is generated, invested or saved—any Malawian, particularly those in the public sector living beyond their means or suspected of indulging in corruption.

Not only that. Section 10(1)(e) of the Act also empowers the bureau to probe “any offence  under any written law disclosed in the course of investigating any alleged or suspected corrupt practice or offence.”

If the bureau were proactive enough, doing what it is doing now all along since the advent of the multiparty system of government in the early 1990s, corruption and related vices would not be claiming 30 percent of our hard-earned revenue annually, an equivalent of the entire aid donors gave us last year! The average revenue loss due to corruption in the Sadc region is 20 percent.

Of course, the ACB has all along philosophised that it is on top of the game, working hard and very independently.  What the bureau grossly fails to do though is to convince the public that it is active and effective when K400 million can disappear from the Accountant General’s office, then someone has the temerity to use his/her office to thwart a probe into the theft (we heard this from Madam President herself!) and the bureau does nothing about it.

Until now, when the President has directed that the case be revived and followed through to its conclusion, really!

The measure of the bureau’s effectiveness should not be, as is the case now, serving as proof of the prevalence of the rule of law in Malawi, especially in the eyes of the donors. There is too much at stake to warrant a different measure.

The ACB should either bring down the high rate of corruption or ensure that our prisons are filled to the roof with convicts of corruption-related crimes regardless of their position in society.

This ACB has much to do so that the money being looted from government coffers can be used for the purchase of drugs for our hospitals, teaching and learning materials for our schools, fuel for police patrols as well as rehabilitation of our roads.

The ACB must also reclaim its independence and engage an extra gear in busting graft so that government does not have to pay a tambala for undelivered goods and services as is the case now. If the ACB can up its act, the morally bankrupt folks in government won’t have to contemplate providing public goods and services at the commercial rate (Isn’t that what removal of subsidies entails?) when the corrupt are draining up to 30 per cent of the public revenue.