Something still rotten

Corruption, nepotism and impunity threaten the peace process

IN SEPTEMBER last year a warrant was issued for the arrest of Sitaram Prasain, who was accused of stealing $4.3m from his own bank. This plunged the partly state-owned outfit, set up to lend to small businesses, into insolvency. Yet somehow the police could not find him. He seemed invisible, even when many of the country's top politicians attended his son's lavish wedding. For many Nepalis, this was all too typical of a system where the rich and privileged are above the law.

When the Young Communist League, a squad of thugs run by Nepal's Maoists, kidnapped Mr Prasain this month and paraded him in front of the press before handing him to the police, there was an almighty row. Girija Koirala, the irate prime minister, called them the “Young Criminal League”. The Maoist leader, known as Prachanda, retorted that it was Mr Koirala who consorted with criminals. Ashish Thapa, of Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, points out that Mr Prasain had given generously to various political parties.

The Maoists, whose ten-year insurgency ended in a messy truce last year, are now partners in an interim government, while the chaotic country pursues a permanent peace. Yet the Prasain affair suggests that peace needs at least some integrity in public life. Aside from short-lived, politically motivated episodes, no one can recall anybody important in Nepal ever being punished for anything.
The Supreme Court itself is bound up in the culture of impunity. Earlier this year an unsuccessful litigant released recordings of his efforts to win a property dispute through bribery. No action has been taken. Yet the judiciary has a vital role in the peace process, both in hearing important constitutional cases and in a planned “truth and reconciliation” process over the many human-rights abuses committed by both sides to the conflict.

The Maoists, while posing as the party of justice, also look shady. There are many reports of their involvement in illegal logging. (A Maoist, as it happens, holds the cabinet portfolio covering forestry, traditionally seen as a lucrative sinecure.) And there has never been a proper accounting for millions of dollars in finance-ministry cheques payable to Krishna Mahara, a Maoist leader. The money was intended to pay for disarming and demobilising the Maoists' fighters. Transparency's Mr Thapa thinks the Maoists in fact have more ways—legal and otherwise—to raise revenue than any other party, and have amassed large sums of money.
The police, too, have a big role to play in establishing law and order before and during elections due this autumn. Yet listening to a group of mid-ranking officers discussing their hopes for juicy job postings does not inspire confidence. The luckiest among them might end up with a casino on their beat, with attendant opportunities for kickbacks. Since Mr Koirala, from the Congress Party, became prime minister last year many officers with Congress links have been promoted.
“It goes to the feudal character of our society,” says Devendra Panday, a former finance minister who is now a campaigner for peace and democracy. “In the patron-client system there is no incentive to clamp down on corruption.” Nepotism and party bias in appointments undermine institutions. “The country is full of incompetent people as well as corrupt ones.”

Cynicism about the way things work is all-pervasive—and extends to foreign aid. International donors are big providers of good jobs for the local elite. Many able young people in Kathmandu, who lack the connections, have concluded that only the upper classes need apply. In the unhappy villages, where most people live and development is yet to come, peasants are quick to assume, rightly or wrongly, that money intended for them has been stolen higher up the system. Others contend that it is simply wasted by people too rich to understand their problems. Such resentments fuelled the Maoists' “people's war”. Yet the system that breeds them shows no sign of changing.

Source: The Economist, June 14, 2007