Government and donors fail to agree on plan for fighting corruption

Liberia and its international aid donors have failed to agree on a radical plan to reduce rampant corruption in the West African country and improve economic governance, but they have pledged to thrash out a compromise agreement by the end of next week. At the heart of the issue is an argument over whether expatriate watchdogs should be placed in key ministries to supervise revenue collection and spending and whether foreign judges should be placed in the courts to administer justice. The donors, including the United Nations, the United States and the European Union, submitted a radical anti-corruption plan to Liberia's transitional government at the end of June. This Liberia Economic Governance Action Plan (LEGAP) provided for the placing of expatriate financial controllers in key ministries, the contracting out of state enterprises to foreign management and the hiring of foreign judges to bolster the judiciary. But the Liberian government presented counter-proposals, which rejected the imposition of foreign watchdogs, at a meeting with donors in the Niger capital Niamey on Tuesday. Monrovia's home-grown Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme (GEMAP), a copy of which was made available to IRIN, accepted that Liberia suffered from "a culture of mismanagement and corruption and the virtual breakdown of institutional capacity." It also acknowledged the need to take "dramatic steps...to pull Liberia back from the precipice of economic collapse" and resolve "a crisis of confidence, both at home and abroad." But the document emphatically rejected the placing of expatriate financial experts in key ministries with powers to veto the actions of government. "The lesson of experience...is that domestic ownership of country programmes has done more to ensure success than any amount of conditionality imposed from the outside," it said. "Others can help, but the job must be done by Liberians." GEMAP acknowledged the need to privatise key state enterprises or turn them over to foreign management to ensure they are depoliticised and run efficiently. It cited the National Port Authority, the Forestry Development Authority, Roberts International Airport and the Liberian Petroleum Refining Corporation as examples of parastatals that should be hived off in this way. The Liberian government even admitted the possibility of employing an expatriate as general manager of the Central Bank. But it insisted there could be no erosion of sovereignty in the campaign to root out corruption and guarantee sound financial management in this country devasted by 14 years of civil war. "Final authority for spending and budgetary matters must remain with the Liberian authorities," it said. The blueprint for improving economic governance that is finally approved by the government and the International Contact Group for Liberia, is due to be submitted to the UN Security Council for ratification. While acknowledging the shortcomings of the Liberian government, the GEMAP document chided donors for being slow to help the West African country recover from its 1989-2003 civil war. "Although the government has intimated to [donors] on numerous occasions the pressing necessity to invest in building institutional capacity, very little has been done in the last 18 months toward this end," the report said. "In fact," it continued, "some partners have downplayed or under-estimated the capacity needs of the country." Last week, the government strengthened an anti-graft task force, established in January, increasing its size and extending its mandate to gather information for legal proceedings. But many ordinary Liberians dismiss these efforts as a smokescreen. "How can the government set up an anti-corruption unit with its own official heading it? The task force should have been an independent one comprised of donor countries because they would exercise impartiality," said Andrew Jarwae, a university economics student. International donors drafted LEGAP to address what they regard as "systemic and endemic corruption" in post-war Liberia. Earlier this month government Budget Director, David Zarlee, confirmed that the government had diverted US $2 million of a fund that had been earmarked to pay salary arrears to civil servants to buy jeeps for politicians instead. Meanwhile, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Maritime Affairs, which oversees Liberia's international shipping register, was suspended on suspicion of siphoning off US $800,000 of government revenue. His deputy was dismissed and both men are due to be prosecuted. A source in West Africa close to the donor community said last month that some governments of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), including Nigeria and Ghana, were apprehensive about the draconian measures advocated by donors for curbing corruption in Liberia, fearing they could provide a blueprint for strong external controls on other governments in the region.