The Bribery Commission had come in for heavy flak for dragging its feet on high profile investigations and also for manipulation of procedure to let off the hook those wielding political power against whom corruption cases have been filed before it.
The Commission is in the news once again and yet again for the wrong reasons. Participating in the Second Reading of the Budget in Parliament, Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe has questioned the logic of continuing with the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption (CIABOC) since it has failed to investigate complaints from the public. He said he himself had made four to five complaints before the CIABOC but none of them had been investigated.
He asked what the purpose of having a Bribery Commission was if it was not investigating bribery and corruption complaints. He said after he made the complaints, he was summoned to the Commission about four or five times and on each occasion questioned for three or four hours to take down his statement. Yet they have not been able to investigate even a single complaint so far.
One could not agree more with the Minister. The Bribery Commission has turned out to be one of the biggest white elephants maintained by public funds. In fact, the building housing the Commission situated in an elite address in the heart of Colombo too should have been earmarked for disposal as a non-performing entity when former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa allegedly planned to sell some of the prominent buildings in the City in order to pump extra funds to boost the economy, shortly before his ouster.
Today, the Bribery Commission has been reduced to a mere TV image showing politicians trooping into its premises to file complaints against their opponents or some civil society activists or lawyers carrying bulky files making a show of themselves. Nothing beyond that is evident.
In short, CIABOC is a farce. If not, how can one explain one of the Commissioners failing to place his signature on the document to prosecute a suspect when the requirement is for the signatures of all Commissioners to be placed? How is this possible considering that the Commissioners are all lawyers? The conclusion is obvious. It is a deliberate ploy to allow the suspect, often a Minister or an individual wielding political power, to escape the law and make a mockery of the justice system.
Why the Courts had not passed severe strictures on the Commissioners for bypassing such a basic requirement, one cannot fathom. This gives credence to the popular belief of collusion among all arms of the legal system to set free politically powerful personages.
We had the famous “No Show” by a former Minister when summoned by the Commission to account for Rs. 400 million worth of assets acquired by him. The reason for staying away was that the Minister was apparently stung by a Polanga (Russell’s Viper). That was the end of the matter as far as the Bribery Commission was concerned. True to form, the case has now been consigned to the dustbin and the former Minister is still very much in the political limelight, going great guns and maintained by the public purse.
The Bribery Commission has a credibility problem. Far from being independent, it has become politicized and guided by the dictates of the politically powerful. This is the reason for the double standards adopted by the Commission always coinciding with the change of Governments. Individuals who are in the political Opposition who are ready meat for the Commission suddenly become paragons of virtue when the tide turns and let off the hook through various machinations.
All high-profile cases filed before the Bribery Commission during the Yahapalanaya have today gone by default and so it is with the big-time crooks who held top positions in State bodies such as the national carrier, while sleuths of the Commission apprehend School Principals, Grama Sevakas, Court Serjeants, Policemen etc. for pittances. What has happened to the matter known as the Pandora Papers which the Bribery Commission was ordered to investigate by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa? What is the Commission doing about the cases filed against political siblings and progeny before it?
Like Minister Dr. Rajapakshe said the CIABOC at present serves no purpose. It has failed in its task of netting in the sharks and only gone for the small fry. Had the Commission really operated independently it would have succeeded in ferreting out all the stolen loot stashed away by politicians and their kith and kin here and abroad and spared somewhat the economic chaos the country is in. A Bribery Commission that blows hot and cold with political changes is not worth its keep. Hence, at a time such as this when the country is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis, maintaining a Government institution that has failed to deliver smacks of a criminal act.
The Bribery Commission should be made to operate unfettered and with an independence that would remain intact unaffected by the political vagaries. If not, as Minister Rajapakshe maintained, keeping the Commission going is not logical.
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