Africa-Press – Mauritius. Many would argue that there was a time post-independence when our political leadership, their appointees at various responsibility positions and the supporting top brass of the civil service were infused with a sense of public good and the national interest and did their best to instil those virtues in thousands of anonymous public officers who manned the ranks.
Everything was not rosy or picture perfect, as much due to our own propensity to hand out tea monies or keep tabs on who could assist with procedures that otherwise could drag along at a snail’s pace, as by those wishing perhaps some compensation for their political involvement and investments in an electoral campaign.
But, by and large, these were not unmanageable particularly with the advent of the POCA legislation and the setting up of ICAC as lead agency in the fight against corruption and money-laundering.
“A credible investigative agency would usually have some legitimacy to claim discretion on ongoing inquiries while communicating periodically on their general progress, but to maintain a state of opacity about the progress of high-profile inquiries contributes its share to the assessment of diplomatically worded “weaknesses” by international bodies and the current vitiated atmosphere in the country referred to a recent MT editorial…”
Controversies surrounded the agency from its inception and for years it battled to make real its “pa get figir” pledge but several affairs since 2015 implicating government ministers and VVIP nomenklatura and which are at ICAC either in sleep mode or at best dawdling along, have led to a rising disenchantment, a public perception of ingrained political bias and a quasi-general loss of confidence in a key institution that could have preserved our country reputation and functioning.
There is unfortunately no credible national rating of our regulatory agencies from or by customers and stakeholders, nor are international ratings of the FATF variety concerned with the corruption of public procurement processes.
Yet, it has been reported in international circles that the Covid pandemic, with its associated emergency procedures, has been notoriously rife with corruption on massive scales, often in broad daylight, by those close to power centres and benefiting from a sense of immunity.
Here too we have heard of the CEB procurement affair known as St Louis gate, the Pack & Blister saga of defective and unusable ventilators, the various health-supply contracts handled through Commerce and the STC, the Molnupiravir saga of purchases far above requirements or prices and the unknowns surrounding vaccine purchases or gifts, part of which have either expired or had to be distributed to some African states.
As ICAC does not communicate on these matters, enquiries remain in “ongoing” mode for years, allowing convenient non-answers in Parliament, but failing the expectations of both the population and even international observers if the repeated IMF, World Bank, and Moody’s warnings over three years on “institutional governance weaknesses” are anything to go by.
A credible investigative agency would usually have some legitimacy to claim discretion on ongoing inquiries while communicating periodically on their general progress, but to maintain a state of opacity about the progress of high-profile inquiries contributes its share to the assessment of diplomatically worded “weaknesses” by international bodies and the current vitiated atmosphere in the country referred to a recent MT editorial.
It is certainly not a consolation for the country that the culture of opacity extends to many important questions where confidentiality clauses, sometimes purely arbitrary or peculiar, are roped in to suit government’s purposes: the Rs 400m Liverpool-Mauritius promotion agreement or the renewal of Terragen (an IPP) or other public utilities contracts are cases in point.
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