Fighting corrupt public servants

According to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), apart from creating a legal framework for asset declarations of government officials, making the declarations open to public scrutiny helps citizens to ensure that leaders do not abuse their power for personal gain.

It is perhaps these principles that compelled Edward Sekyewa, the executive director of the Hub for Investigative Media, to challenge the Inspectorate of Government to make public servants’ declarations open for public scrutiny in 2013.

Sekyewa who was the then Editor of Kampala Dispatch took the IGG to court in February 2013 when the former IGG, Irene Mulyagonja, refused to give him the wealth declarations of all permanent secretaries of government ministries in Uganda under the Access to Information Act, 2005.

“This was the time when several permanent secretaries were being indicted on corruption charges and I wanted to scrutinize the wealth declarations of all permanent secretaries,” he told The Independent on Sept.3.

Mulyagonja noted that the information requested for was omnibus in nature and the IGG was thus concerned about the high costs associated with the retrieval and reproduction of this information.

She said the Leadership Code Act does not prescribe a form through which the IG can divulge the information requested for by the public. She said the Access to Information law does not apply to information to the Inspectorate of Government under the Leadership Code Act. She also noted that the government could be sued for breach of the right to privacy if information is released indiscriminately.

Unimpressed, Sekyewa went to court seeking redress. But the court advised Sekyewa and the Attorney General to go for mediation. Outside court, the Attorney General asked Sekyewa to grant the government up to one year “to review a few issues.” Sekyewa realised later that the government was only buying time to amend the Leadership Code Act – and make it more difficult to get the information. Uganda now has the Leadership Code (Amendment) Act, 2017.

Under it, the public cannot easily access details of public officials’ assets, income and liabilities from the IGG. The applicant must pay up to Shs 200,000 for every file they want to look at.

Munira told The Independent in an email that the contents of the leader’s declarations include their bank account details, names of their family members and location of their properties including homes— information which can easily be abused by the public.

However, experts The Independent has interviewed for this story say most countries expect their top leaders to publish information about their assets. This is because politicians and civil servants hold substantial power over allocation of resources in their countries and the citizens who elect them, and who in effect pay their salaries through their tax contributions should know about their assets.

Sekyewa says given the way the law is currently set-up, no one will give any citizen access to that information because one has to satisfy the Inspector General why they need that information.

Interestingly, the original law of 2002, Sekyewa says, gave Ugandans the right to access the public officers’ information without explaining why one needs it.  Sekyewa has filed a petition in the Constitutional Court.

“I would like to see the right of the citizens to access public leaders’ declarations as it was intended,” he told The Independent, “If you read the amended law, it is no longer looking at accountability and transparency but it is looking at protecting errant public servants from public scrutiny.”

Sekyewa says even the recently created tribunal might not work best without citizens’ scrutiny of what the leaders have declared.

“This is classic politics. You now have the tribunal in place but the Leadership Code has no power. They have given you with one hand and taken away with the other hand.”

Many experts The Independent has talked to wondered how the IGG makes sense of the declarations without working with the public to help ascertain completeness of the records.

Kagaba says she read disingenuity on the side of the legislators because “we know that our leaders often hide some of their ill-gotten wealth behind their children.”  “The motive was obvious; they don’t want to be trapped,” Kagaba told The Independent.

When Kagaba appeared before Parliament during the time the public was asked to give their views in the new Leadership Code Act, she told the MPs about the importance of retaining the clause that forces public officials to declare their wealth as well as that of their spouses and children. But an MP shot back with a question: “Why should we do so yet the whole exercise is all about the individual leaders?”

Peter Wandera, the executive director of the Uganda chapter of Transparency International told The Independent that the leadership code should make it less arduous for the public to have access to the database. People should be able to get access to this information because it is the public that knows which car an official drives or which bungalow they are building.

According to the World Bank, administration of an asset disclosure programme requires a monitoring and evaluation agency to collect and verify information and investigate, prosecute and sanction those who fail to comply.

This is one aspect that Ruzindana, the former IGG, says Uganda’s Inspectorate of Government has grappled with for many years. He says the declarations are too many to be followed up the Inspectorate of Government.

In March, last year, for instance, the IG was expected to receive declarations from 25,000 leaders, who were eligible to declare by 31 March, 2019. The compliance rate was 85% (21,182 out of the expected 25,000) according to the bi-annual Inspectorate of Government performance report to Parliament (January-June, 2019) released in May this year.

At the beginning of this reporting period, the Directorate had 138 ongoing verification cases at various stages while 199 new verification cases were opened and a total of 171 verification cases were concluded.

Wandera told The Independent that the IG is both overstretched and lacks both human and financial resources.

“The IG has declarations in excess of 25,000 public officials and these include; the headmaster of a primary school in Nakapiripirit District in northeastern Uganda or even the lowest ranked army officer. Verifying this information in one or two years is next to impossible,” Wandera says.

Wandera says Uganda should come up with a systematic way of looking at the grey areas—by probably putting emphasis on holders of public offices who can be compromised.

Meanwhile Ruzindana says Uganda’s Leadership Code has not been that helpful because “corruption has become the norm and not the exception.”

“The IG’s office was set up to deal with the public officers’ excesses but now this is the norm,” he says.

Ruzindana told The Independent that Uganda’s progress towards the ideals of transparency and accountability in public service is slow but it is the only hope. He expects tax declarations to become mandatory one day. When that happens, he says, public officials’ declarations will become unnecessary.

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