KICAC and ACC: A comparison of performance

Before evaluating our ACC, I want to give the readers a brief description of the first-year activities of Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption (KICAC).

The KICAC was founded on 25th January 2002 following the enactment of the Anti-corruption Commission Act 2001. The KICAC carried out a number of activities in its first year of enactment in 2002.

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(a) It developed a Basic Anti-corruption Policy (BAP) which contains the nature and extent of corruption in Korea with the ultimate goal of becoming "transparent, fair, and clean nation." The BAP targeted some sectors such as administrative sector, judicial sector, political sector, corporate sector to abolish corruption-friendly practices and mindset, improve transparency in administrative procedure and reform the system and environment that may reduce corruption, ultimately to establish an advanced social system that will thoroughly eradicate corruption. The BAP planned to increase transparency in government contracts and procurement by introducing "Civil Application Online System", the "Electronic Bidding System" and "Oath of Integrity System". For citizen's participation in administrative procedures, the KICAC planned to introduce "Expanded Administrative Information Disclosure", "Citizen Inspector System" and "Public-Private Joint Inspection Team on Corruption".

(b) The KICAC prepared a set of comprehensive measures to eradicate political corruption. It identified some areas of political corruption and proposed to the government for institutionalising low-cost campaigning, expanding public election management system, ensuring greater transparency for political fund by requiring a single bank account, tight control on the spending of national subsidies, establishing low-cost political structure, expanding the scope of legitimate political fund raising, enhancing transparency in political fund management, strengthening punishment for political fund-related crimes, among other things.

(c) The Korea Commission prepared a draft Code of Conduct for public officials to be established and enforced by the administration, national assembly, national election commission and constitutional court. With some recommendations the draft Code of Conduct was accepted and published in the official gazette on 26th November 2002.

(d) The KICAC set up a Corruption Report Centre (CRC) which represents the commission and serves as a gateway for the people to meet with the commission. The CRC is open to the public on a 24-hour year-round basis with its top priorities being receiving reports, providing kind and expert counseling and guaranteeing confidentiality of the informant or whistleblower. In 2002 the CRC had seven staff to deal with this issue. In this year it received 2,572 reports on corruption by visit, telephone and internet.

(e) The KICAC in its first stage in 2002 targeted to make a "transparent, fair and clean nation" and the objective of this stage was to regain the confidence of the people and complete the anti-corruption infrastructure by introducing new system. In the second stage -- between 2003-2005 -- the commission planned to increase transparency in Korea with a view to improving the situation in TI's Corruption Perception Index (CPI). In 2002 Korea was ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in CPI. But its position in this index has been increasing since 2003 with 50th in 2003, 47th in 2004 and 40th in 2005. It has targeted to improve this position to 10th by 2010.

(f) The KICAC introduced a significant whistleblowing system under which a current or former member of an organisation can report or raise issues of illegal acts or wrongdoings of that organisation to outside agencies including audit and inspection institutions, media or public corporations in order to protect safety, rights and interests of the society and to protect the people's right to know. In 2002 the Commission categorised 38 cases as whistleblowing. Out of these 38 cases, 34 have been completed.

As a result, 27 were referred to relevant authorities and the remaining 7 were concluded without referral. The KICAC also introduced a "Manual on Whistleblower Protection and Reward" in October 2002.

(g) In the first year of enactment, the Korean commission conducted an assessment of the integrity of public agencies in order to further the transparency and fairness of state administration through a scientific and systematic approach. The study covered most of the services provided by 71 public organisations. Based on the findings of this study, the KICAC introduced an "Integrity Index". They also carried out the first round of perception of corruption survey among the general public, experts, civil servants and foreigners, aimed to objectively study and analyse the general perception of, and attitude toward, corruption-related matters.

(h) The Korean commission also took a number of anti-corruption measures such as recommendations for institutional reform, new bidding system, promoting anti-corruption education, international cooperation etc. among others.

Some daily newspapers on 18th December last informed the readers that the ACC had filed its first corruption case after its inception in last November 2004. On 6th April 2006, The Daily Star published a report saying that the ACC was itself facing 78 writ petitions against its actions. The commission has not yet finalised its organisational structure as required by the law. I think it would not be wise to describe more on the list of failure of our Anti-corruption Commission. People of Bangladesh know all its activities through the vibrant media. I just want to say one thing for the chairman and commissioners of the ACC. Please think about yourself and identify the issues which cause barrier to working independently, try to solve them and if you fail, inform then also the citizens who are paying taxes for running this organisation.

Md Abdul Alim, a former researcher of TI-Bangladesh, is presently doing higher research in the field of governance.