Scrutinise all shady deals
In this interview, our Staff Writer SUZGO CHITETE engages Centre for Social Accountability & Transparency (Csat) executive director Willy Kambwandira on recent steps to clamp down on suspicious public contracts. Excerpts:
Q: What do you make out of the termination of some contracts by the Attorney General Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda?
A: In my view, the Attorney General is just doing his job. What is special though is that he has departed from what we thought were conventional ways of how those in public office should act.
If the award of these contracts did not follow procurement procedures, then it is the noble duty of the Attorney General to scrutinise and terminate them if they had breached the procurement law. It is a measured view that the Attorney General is just clearing the long-standing mess that his predecessors created or cultivated. The unfortunate part is that terminating contracts comes with a cost and it is a poor Malawian who will have to pay for it.
Our advice to the Tonse Alliance government is that they should always strive to follow proper procedures when awarding contracts. They must promote open contracting to avoid a replica of what we are seeing. It is high time that corrective measures and personal accountability should be taken against public officers involved in the award of terminated contracts.
Q: It appears there is rot in the manner most public contracts are executed. How best should government deal with this?
A: Recent studies show that about 70 percent of our national budget is spent on procurement. It is, therefore, important for government to take procurement seriously. To deal with these scams, government must strive to promote open contracting in the award of all public contracts and take a boldstep to transparently review all the contracts that were awarded by the previous government to ensure that proper procedures were followed.
We commend the Attorney General for diving deep in the business of his office. All suppliers involved in the mess must be blacklisted from providing services to government. But over and above, government must ensure that prosecutions of these cases is concluded within reasonable time.
Q: We have also seen more arrests, but with little success in terms of prosecution. What do you make of this?
A: As Csat, we are also greatly concerned with continued delays in prosecution of cases and exceedingly long trials.
In my view, the problem is not the law, but weak and selective enforcement of the law. There are cartels to deliberately delay cases in courts through multiple adjournments. We have all seen how politicians and other elites occasionally influence the law enforcement agencies despite organisational independence. Sadly, this is costing our country billions and lowers public confidence on prosecuting and investigation agencies.
Q: There is an ongoing investigation by the UK’s National Crime Agency and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on businessperson Zuneth Sattar. What’s your expectation on this?
A: It is our expectation that this case will be treated like any other ordinary case, and that justice will be served. We commend the ACB and the UK crime-busting agency for swiftly closing in on this matter, and in the the same way, Malawians expect speedy trial of the case. However, apart from following the rule of law, prosecution of such cases require high level integrity otherwise.
Q: There is a suspicion of massive abuse of public resources in the name of contracts for security agencies. How should government improve transparency in these seemingly sensitive establishments without compromising security?
A: Procurement is a big issue and government should take it seriously by making sure that they follow procurement law and regulations. Government must also move to promote open contracting in award of all government contracts. It is high time that government signed integrity agreement with civil society organisations on huge contracts to promote transparency, accountability, value for money and integrity of public procurement systems. It is also high time that we started placing personal accountability on individual public officers who purposefully mess award of contracts in order to sustain law enforcement efforts. But over and above, we need people of integrity in the public service.
Q: Asset recovery has become a topical concern in Malawi, but it is still very much in its infancy. Where is the problem?
A: The efforts to recover the stolen assets and inflict financial punishments have had a degree of success, even though the recovered assets fall well short of the sums that have been misappropriated. Generally, the recovery of stolen assets has proved to be time-consuming and difficult. This is by no means exclusive to Malawi: in most jurisdictions, the preeminence of property rights hampers simple or prompt recovery of the proceeds of crime. In my view, expropriation of illicit wealth should be integrated into all forms of disciplinary and court proceedings against wrongdoers in both public and private sectors. This is the more reason Csat has been pushing for the implementation of asset declaration law, and beneficial ownership register.
