As a teenager visiting the Plaza cinema to watch Kung Fu movies, there was always at least one unruly person who put his feet on the chair in front of him and behaved badly. During those times, I would wonder where the adults were. I remember promising myself that when I reached 30 years of age, I would be the
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Government Ministers can corrupt a national economy by giving no-bid (or no-tendering) contracts in exchange for bribes. The participating businesses are normally the least competent in the country, who can only survive by paying bribes to shield them from fair competition. Their incompetence is normally revealed in the substandard goods and services they provide. The substandard goods normally require excessive
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It is well known that worldwide, corruption is normally associated with Government’s procurement (purchasing) of products (goods and services). In its crudest form, Ministers of Government will tell businesses (including consultants) to increase their bills, and to secretly pay them the increase if they want the job. Businesses that participate in corruption tend to be too badly managed to successfully
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I suppose that as a keen student of the law relating to employment and especially that of its termination, I ought to have focused today’s column on the ongoing retrenchment in the public sector, its accordance with fairness and its likely economic and social consequences for the nation. However, that discussion will have to await a future column; today I
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Of course the proof of the pudding will ultimately lie in the eating, but the Integrity in Public Life is not short on provisions designed to ensure the reduction of opportunities for specified persons in public life to profit from corruption. In addition to mandating the declaration of particulars by these individuals that we treated at length in the last
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The principal technique employed by the Bill for combating corruption is to have specified persons in public life declare their financial affairs to the Commission or, where he or she is a member or staff member of the Commission, to the Governor General under Part IV of the Bill. Immediately, two observations may be made. First, it bears remarking that
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The current official imperative to establish machinery to modernize the statute that criminalizes corruption in matters of state has seemingly not met with universal acclaim, if I am to judge from a number of responses to my offering in this space last Sunday. While there are those who believe that corrupt behaviour among public officials merits the harshest punishment constitutionally
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