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Kathmandu Monday June 26, 2000 Ahsad 12, 2057.
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Empower CIAA
It is unfortunate that Commission for Investigation of Abuse
of Authority (CIAA) is made to take directives from the Prime Minister and the Attorney
General whenever it has to investigate government cases. This provision without any doubt
undermines the independent investigation of any cases related to misuse of authority. The
CIAA loses all pretense of independence when such contradictory provisions are enforced.
It would be wrong to induct other agencies to monitor the affairs of CIAA which is an
independent entity created by the constitution. Yet, despite the CIAA, there is a rampant
misuse of public properties while implementing government plans and programmes.
It is sad to note that the CIAA formed with the promulgation
of the new Constitution cannot take decisions without the consent of the Prime Minister
and the Attorney General. The parliament and successive governments formed after 1990 have
also failed to adequately empower the CIAA. Of the over three dozen major cases
investigated by CIAA, it has not been able to even convict a single corrupt politician so
far. As a result, corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and legal ‘experts’ who are
alleged to have amassed wealth after misusing public property or their authority, continue
to be legally protected whenever CIAA investigates corruption cases. It is a fact that
there is an invisible nexus between corrupt politicians and businessmen that indirectly
regulates the CIAA.
Girija Prasad Koirala, ever since he became the Prime
Minister, has often pledged to curb the corruption cases but he has failed to give any
priority to reform the existing law that has virtually been eating into the roots of
development. Had the government done something in the early 1990s to prevent corrupt
politicians from misusing power, the state owned corporations would not have been left on
the verge of collapse nor would the country have come to the present pass. Successive
elected governments, including the present NC-led one, have neither punished the corrupt
nor amended the CIAA laws to allow it to become a truly independent body so that it could
probe into irregularities thoroughly. In fact, what has happened is that CIAA has become a
tool that promotes corruption. For this, the government and the judicial system of the
country are solely responsible.
The government should stop claiming that it is going to curb
the corruption until it empowers the CIAA to be an independent body. The CIAA has failed
to punish or book corrupt leaders even though there was enough evidence of their
involvement in corruption. The way the CIAA has probed irregularities also shows that it
has made a mockery of law rather than progress in investigations. If the investigation
carried out by CIAA cannot prove the rampant misuse of power, the parliament has no option
but to amend law that has turned CIAA into an impotent body.
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