Article In Economist On Corruption In Se Asia

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The link is here:-

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displa...tory_id=2446845

Who will watch the watchdogs?

Feb 19th 2004 | JAKARTA

From The Economist print edition

Despite a few encouraging signs, South-East Asia's record on fighting corruption at the top is still mostly lamentable

MALAYSIA is agog with speculation. The government, which charged a sitting minister and a prominent businessman with corruption earlier this month, says it has a list of 18 other high-profile suspects due for similar treatment. Opposition politicians say that Rafidah Aziz, the minister of trade, should be among them. She denies any wrong-doing and says she will sue her critics for defamation—a threat they claim to welcome as a chance to prove their accusations in court. Is the pervasiveness of corruption, a problem common to most countries in South-East Asia, at last getting a proper airing?

The region is certainly awash with celebrated corruption cases. Joseph Estrada, the deposed president of the Philippines, is currently on trial for “economic plunder”. On February 12th, Indonesia's supreme court finally ruled on a long-running embezzlement case against Akbar Tandjung, the speaker of parliament. In 2001, Thailand's constitutional court heard charges that Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister, had concealed some assets during an earlier stint as minister. Last October, it sentenced a former health minister, Rakkiat Sukthana, to 15 years in jail for colluding with pharmaceutical firms.

But there is less to this flurry of righteousness than meets the eye. For starters, prosecutors have not had much success against grand defendants like Messrs Thaksin and Tandjung. Both persuaded higher courts to overturn earlier rulings against them. Mr Estrada, too, managed to evade impeachment while in office, and prosecutors are making heavy weather of their current case against him. Even the convicted Mr Rakkiat has not yet begun his prison term, since he jumped bail and went into hiding. What is more, all the countries in the region save Singapore and Malaysia still rank in the bottom half of the most recent “Corruption Perceptions Index” compiled by Transparency International, an anti-graft watchdog. Vietnam ranked 100 out of 133 countries, Indonesia 122 and Myanmar a dismal 129.

This poor showing stems in part from a lack of laws, personnel and money to combat corruption. But the resource in shortest supply is political will to tackle the problem. All countries in South-East Asia have at least one anti-corruption agency. But the ones that work best, argues Jon Quah, a professor at the National University of Singapore, are centralised, independent agencies such as Thailand's National Counter Corruption Commission. By contrast, Malaysia's Anti-Corruption Agency reports to the government, and so is subject to political control. The Philippines, meanwhile, has adopted no fewer than seven anti-corruption laws in the past 50 years, and created 13 anti-graft agencies, according to Mr Quah's count. Dramatic but disputed corruption allegations, such as the claim that the president's husband is managing multiple slush finds, simply get lost in all this bureaucracy.

Even theoretically independent agencies, of course, are still subject to political interference, most obviously through appointments. The governing coalition in Thailand has learned how to maximise its say on the panels that select members of the country's various watchdog agencies—which have become much less meddlesome as a result. Indonesia's parliament, which just set up a similar agency called the Corruption Eradication Commission, declined to appoint the most crusading candidates as commissioners.

The courts can also undermine counter-corruption efforts. In the Philippines, cases can be drawn out for so long, through so many appeals, that the risk of prosecution does not provide an effective deterrent to corruption. In Indonesia, all courts are for sale, according to one supreme-court justice. At any rate, they often return quixotic rulings. The supreme court, for example, accepted Mr Tandjung's argument that he should not be punished for misappropriating funds as a minister, since he apparently did so on the orders of the president of the day, his administrative superior. At the very least, argues Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, a law professor at the University of Indonesia, the court should have considered Mr Tandjung an accessory to corruption. Instead, she worries, the new precedent paves the way for the court to dismiss several other pending corruption cases. And only a handful of cases have made it to court at all, despite Indonesia's many multi-million dollar corruption scandals in recent years.

That is where political will comes in. Indonesian politicians often speak of the need to combat corruption, but dragged their feet over the creation of the Corruption Eradication Commission. Members of parliament freely admit that they are on the take, so were naturally reluctant to put themselves under scrutiny. Gloria Arroyo, the president of the Philippines, also pays lip-service to anti-graft efforts. But when corrupt tax collectors rebelled against a reforming new boss last year, she backed down and accepted his resignation. In Thailand, Mr Thaksin implied during his own corruption trial that scrutiny of ministers was an unwarranted intrusion into the workings of government. Since becoming prime minister, he has stacked his cabinet with former businessmen, yet has not instituted any formal system to prevent them taking decisions that might affect their families' firms.

The counter-corruption mechanisms in Malaysia have not changed at all since Abdullah Badawi became prime minister last year. Yet instead of prosecuting a whistle-blower for releasing details of corruption investigations, as his predecessor did, Mr Badawi has hauled a minister into court. True, an election is imminent, and the minister in question is scarcely a heavyweight. But Mr Badawi is also taking serious steps to reduce corruption in the long term, such as awarding government contracts by open tender. If Malaysia had only instituted such a policy a decade ago, there might not have been any secret list of suspects to argue about.