Social Cancer of Corruption Still Metastasizing in Burma

Kyaw Zwa Moe | March 23, 2012

In Burma, bribery is a way of life. There seems to be no escaping it, in all of its many forms. From the tea or beer money paid to low-ranking officials to the car keys and cookie tins full of cash or gold reserved for those with real influence, corruption exists at almost every level of society.

Most Burmese grow up thinking that the only way to get things done is by making “donations” to the right people. Even schoolchildren know that their parents are under constant pressure to pay gratuities to their schools and teachers.

Graft is a family affair in Burma. Ministers and directors of governmental departments rarely take their kickbacks directly. A particularly weighty gift of biscuits delivered into the hands of their wives is the preferred way of letting senior officials know how much their help is appreciated.

In Burma, there is no happy occasion that can’t double as an opportunity for slipping a gift to someone who matters. The sons and daughters of the powerful are not burdened with oversized presents when they marry, but they invariably acquire quite a collection of car keys, usually to the latest Mercedes or SUVs. When former Sr. Gen. Than Shwe gave away his daughter in 2006, for instance, the happy couple reportedly received 70 sets of keys.

For all its ubiquity, however, corruption is still a taboo topic. That’s why many Burmese have taken a keen interest in the release of a government audit report submitted to Parliament earlier this month that revealed rampant malfeasance in six ministries operating under the former junta.

Nobody is surprised to learn about wrongdoing among public officials. In Burma, it’s as natural as wind and rain. But it’s a little startling, to say the least, when the government itself decides to shed some light on these activities.

According to the report, the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Co-operatives, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, the Ministry of Mining and the Ministries of Industry No. 1 and No. 2 were all guilty of gross abuse of power and misuse of state resources.

The amount of money in question, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, would be remarkable in any society. In a country as impoverished as Burma, it is breathtaking.

What’s all the more disturbing is the fact that each of these ministries was led by someone who still wields power in the current government. Information Minister Kyaw Hsan, for instance, held the same position under the old regime, and the former Minister for Industry No. 1, Aung Thaung, is the chief negotiator in peace talks with ethnic armed groups.

Nearly a year has passed since President Thein Sein vowed to tackle corruption in his inaugural address.

“The most important task of the new administration is to work together to create good governance and clean government,” he said at the time, urging all levels of government to be transparent and accountable.

Despite these words, however, Burma still scored extremely poorly on corruption last year. In December, Berlin-based Transparency International ranked it 180th out of 182 countries (tied with Afghanistan) in its “Corruption Perceptions Index 2011.”

Soon after the audit findings were submitted to Parliament, Lower House Speaker Shwe Mann agreed to discuss forming a parliamentary anti-corruption commission.

It’s a welcome move, but already there are doubts about how far a commission would go to address the issue, given that Shwe Mann’s own son, Aung Thet Mann, has reportedly received various lucrative government business concessions for his Ayeyar Shwe War Company. He is on a US blacklist, together with other sons of current government officials.

In fact, it would be difficult to come up with the name of a single senior official who is not in some way linked to shady business dealings. In Burma, that’s just one of the perks of public life.

Last year, a senior presidential adviser warned that any effort to stamp out graft would meet with resistance from people in high places, and sure enough, the backlash has already begun. Last week, the state-run New Light of Myanmar reported that the Ministry of Mines would sue the Rangoon-based journal The Voice for publishing allegations of corruption.

If Shwe Mann and others who claim to want a clean, graft-free government are sincere, they will begin their anti-corruption drive with a full disclosure of their own wealth and that of their closest relatives. This transparency must be accompanied by a concerted effort to ensure that any commission they create to address this issue is independent and fully empowered to prosecute offenders. The laws must treat corruption as the social cancer that it is.

Kyaw Zwa Moe is managing editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at kyawzwa@irrawaddy.org.

link : http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/social-cancer-of-corruption-still-metastasizing-in-burma/506362

The Thieves of Burma

Hello from the third-most corrupt place on Earth.

BY CHRISTIAN CARYL | MARCH 27, 2012

YANGON - This week I'm in Burma, where Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is running for a seat in parliament. This is the first time she's been allowed to participate in an election in 22 years. The last one, in 1990, brought a landslide victory to her National League for Democracy (NLD). But she wasn't really in a position to enjoy it. As the results came in she was already under house arrest, and many of her colleagues had disappeared into prison.

If she makes it into parliament this time around, she will have little formal power to affect the passage of legislation. Even if the NLD wins all the seats up for grabs, its presence in parliament will still be dwarfed by that of the military, which has controlled the country's political system for the past 50 years and is automatically assured a large bloc of seats in the assembly.

Yet no one should underestimate The Lady, as many refer to her here. As the only politician in the country to enjoy genuine adulation, Aung San Suu Kyi is sure to give her party a disproportionately loud voice, and in politics that can count for quite a lot. As the de facto leader of the opposition, she will be able to turn a spotlight on issues that the country's military rulers have long preferred to leave in the shadows.

She should start with an issue that holds a prominent place in the lives of her compatriots: corruption. Burma is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, which is saying a lot. In the most recent Corruption Perceptions Index published by the watchdog group Transparency International, Burma's rank was 180. The only countries that ranked worse were Somalia and North Korea.

This will not come as news to Aung San Suu Kyi's voters. They encounter petty bribery on an everyday basis, but the culture of sleaze here goes way beyond that. For decades, Burma's military leaders divided up this country's astonishing national wealth among themselves, reducing the rest of their compatriots to poverty. On YouTube you can watch a leaked video of the wedding of the daughter of top general Than Shwe (pictured above, and covered in jewels). If you want to pay your respects to someone powerful in Burma, the best way to do so is by giving him or her a car as a present. Rumor has it that the gifts received by the happy couple in the video included 70 sets of car keys.

This is hardly a trivial problem. Burma desperately needs foreign direct investment to jumpstart economic growth and spur the influx of modern management and technological know-how, but investors are likely to shy away if the country can't clean up its act. Why put money into a factory -- or an English-language newspaper, for that matter -- if some politically well-connected thug can come along at the right moment and scoop up your property? Especially when you know that you'll have little chance of redress, since the legal system is also deeply permeated by sleaze.

So malfeasance is a big problem. But there's another reason why Aung San Suu Kyi should make it a priority. Her real power to change things may be limited, but corruption is one area where a bit of sunlight can have a disproportionate effect. If she succeeds in winning a seat, one of the first things she should do upon entering parliament is to propose a public code of conduct for all government officials. She should push for transparency in the administration of all state-owned assets, including clear rules on procurement and the awarding of government contracts.

She should also declare her interest in setting up an anti-corruption commission modeled on the existing bodies in Hong Kong or Singapore. Both places are famous for giving their corruption-fighting ombudsmen broad powers to investigate and prosecute graft. As a matter of fact, Burma's immediate neighborhood is rife with anti-corruption initiatives these days. Some of the most interesting come from India, where activists are bringing the power of the Internet to bear on petty bribery and official malfeasance. So there can be little talk of corruption-fighting as a quirk of alien Western culture. Nowadays, it would seem, many Asians are becoming obsessed with combating graft. What's more, these efforts demonstrate that combating corruption is not predestined by culture or history. Culturally speaking, Hong Kong and Singapore, both former British colonies, should be just as corrupt as other former British colonies like India and Burma. The difference is that Hong Kong and Singapore found the political will to tackle the problem. Burma's leaders can do the same.

Still, I doubt that the present government is likely to undertake serious measures in this direction any time soon; too many of its members remain compromised by their own dirty dealings. But if the government fails to respond to opposition demands for a true anti-corruption policy, voters will have little reason to reward it for doing so in the next general election three years from now. The powers-that-be reject the principle of clean government at their own risk.

What's more, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD should practice what they preach. She should announce a policy of zero tolerance among her own followers, including the full and transparent disclosure of assets. As the recent experience of the African National Congress so vividly illustrates, the popular freedom fighters of yesterday can easily morph into the sleazeballs of today once they achieve real power. Starting with the right policies now can help to stave off temptation in the future.

Corruption is Burma's Biggest Problem: Upper House Speaker

By HPYO WAI THA / THE IRRAWADDY Monday, March 26, 2012

NAYPYIDAW— Fighting rampant corruption is the most important issue facing Burma today, said Upper House Speaker Khin Aung Myint in an exclusive interview with The Irrawaddy.

The ex-minister for culture said that existing anti-corruption legislation is out-of date and proposed amendments had already been approved by the Lower House, and would be submitted to the Union Parliament during the next session.

Six key ministries under the former military junta, all of which led by prominent members of the current administration, were accused of misusing billions of kyat in state funds in a government audit report released to members of Burma's Lower House of Parliament at the beginning of March.

Khin Aung Myint revealed that he has approved the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament to investigate how ministries spend their budgets, and the legislature will urge the government to take action where needed.

During an one-hour interview with The Irrawaddy founder Aung Zaw, the 67-year-old speaker also talked about the latest session of Parliament and related issues including military spending, an insider's viewpoint on the National Defense and Security Council and his attitude towards Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

He said that should the Nobel Peace Prize laureate join Parliament, it would be her decision whether to remain an MP or join a parliamentary committee.

“She's a knowledgeable and educated person with both a good international as well as national image. If she's in the Parliament, our capacity will increase and new ideas will come out. But how she will participate is up to her,” said Khin Aung Myint on Friday after the end of the third session of Parliament.

The speaker admitted that the legislature's third session, which began in January, was overwhelmed by the budget plan for the next fiscal year. He admitted that the budget allocation for military spending is still high at 16 percent, but claimed it was relatively low in comparison with other countries' spending and that both Houses of Parliament approved the allocation.

And the former Major-General denied reports that the Parliament was always going to rubber-stamp military spending as the institution was heavily dominated by army officers and the military-dominated Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), by saying that the budget session would not have taken so long if the assembly really was so biased.

“The military took only 25 percent of the seats and it doesn't make a great difference in voting,” he said. “They even said 'yes' to the amnesty for the political prisoners. What all MPs did is for the interests of the country.”

He added that the fledgling Parliament has recently become more active and dynamic than during earlier sessions when MPs would only discuss the needs of their constituencies. “Now we have more focus on policies, and are trying to implement our motto: 'the people's voice is our voice,' as well.”

As a member of the National Defense and Security Council—an 11-member government body with the power to declare states of emergency and appoint the commander-in-chief of defense services—the Upper House Speaker said that even although the council is approved by the Constitution, it cannot be involved in every issue of state affairs. Asked if there was a split between hard and softliners in the council, he answered “no division” with a laugh.

When Suu Kyi visited the Parliament last week, Khin Aung Myint told her not to be worried about the small presence of opposition seats. “I told her we would all support anything that would be good for the country and people,” he said.

When asked whether there had been any recent change in his attitude towards Suu Kyi, the former Major-General replied it would be wrong to think so.

“If we regard General Aung San [the independence hero who founded the Burmese Army and was Suu Kyi's father] as our father, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is our sister. I have never badmouthed her. I see her as my sister,” he added.