By our Staff Writer
With just over two months in office, the government of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has indicated that the country’s judiciary should take some of the blame for its failure to successfully fight corruption.
“Most of the cases the Government of Liberia lost in courts came down to the twin factors of judicial incompetence and the susceptibility of some court officials to bribes,” Sirleaf’s Information Minister Eugene Lenn Nagbe told the Crans Montana Forum on Global Governance and the fight against Corruption in Brussels, Belgium October 26, 2017.
Speaking on the theme: Tackling The Corruption Menace Whilst Re-Building A Failed State –The Experience of Ellen Sirleaf’s Liberia, Nagbe said on the overall, the government has made some fundamental gains in fighting graft.
But he said President Sirleaf has inherited a failed state, an economy in shambles and a shattered nation to rebuild, with this menace entrenched in a weak political system in which corrupt people hide for cover.
“Therefore fighting corruption requires building a broad political coalition across political parties,” the Liberian Information Minister said.
When she first took power nearly 12 years after being elected in 2005, Sirleaf promised to make zero tolerance against corruption and vowed to make the menace “public enemy number one,” something she had conceded emerged to have now become a “vampire” in her two six-year terms administration.
Nagbe said her first approach was to build strong anticorruption institutions in order “to support a robust fight against corruption through prevention and prosecution.”
He cited a number of anti-graft and transparency institutions the government set up with support of international institutions to meet international best practices.
“Toward this end the Public Procurement and Concession Commission (PPCC), General Auditing Commission (GAC), Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC) and Liberia Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (LEITI) were all established or re-organized within the first term of this government. Our Government under the Leadership of President Sirleaf has leveraged these institutions, with marked progress, to prevent public sector corruption, waste and abuse.”
He added that the “GAC is equipped to perform audits of the system to unearth any weaknesses, supply evidence that could be used by the LACC to prosecute those who violate the public trust.”
However, critics of the Johnson Sirleaf government have said infrastructures of those integrity institutions were set up but the administration “lacks the political will” to make them work effectively.
One of such critics, the replaced General Auditing Commission (GAC) Auditor General John Morlu at one time described the Sirleaf regime as “three times more corrupt” than the Gyude Bryant-led transitional government she succeeded in 2006.
Scores of audit reports linking some of the President close relatives and political allies have over the years gathered dust with no action taken, as some of those officials have been recycled in different top posts.
Among such government entities often cited by critics is the National Oil Company (NOCAL) that was said to be driven bankrupt by the President’s favourite son Robert Sirleaf, after which the Liberian leader said she took “personal responsibility” for the scandal. But no one has since been brought to book.
In fact the immediate past head of NOCAL and other top officials have been given a fabulous severance pay send off, as some reports put the amount that went down the drain at the oil company at US$32m.
But in his Brussels speech, Information Minister Nagbe boasted despite the uphill struggle in the fight against corruption, the Sirleaf government has laid the foundation for future governments to build on.
“We now have strong anti-corruption laws and institutions that can, with some additional investments and reforms, be used as a spring board for greater success in the fight against corruption,” he said and cited the controversial National Code of Conduct as one of the success stories.
“We have introduced an assets declaration regime, a National Code of Conduct, a Financial Intelligence Unit, and the Public Procurement and Concessions Commission. We have strengthened the prosecutorial arm of the Ministry of Justice, and established a Presidential Task Force to assist in reviewing and implementing recommendations resulting from internal and external audits,’’ according to the Liberian Information Minister.