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Topic Discussion IV
Achieving Good Governance
Controlling Corruption, Improving
Administration
and Strengthening the Rule of Law
Room 1
(21 of 22 pages)
So corruption and as I say, doing away with the corruption, all of a sudden when
you come to the government, you cannot do it. If we start from the very early period, say in the political party,
the political party should conduct a code and all the political parties should conduct a code and the government
should also have to conduct a code. Thank you very much.
Chair: Thank you very much, particularly that entertaining story. The moral perhaps is not very practical,
but maybe in some countries.
Speaker: My name Faris Sukoff (ph), the head of the Future Studies in Yemen. Actually, when talking of corruption
in Yemen, as my colleagues said, it is talk that is conducted or done as if talking about something that is not
to be found on our planet and that's why we cannot say that Yemen is on the right way to control corruption. We
can't say that it had achieved anything in this regard. We heard from our colleagues in other countries having
auditing commission or a general public fund auditing for example or other examples mentioned today.
Starting in the '70s here in Yemen, we have what we call the Central Body for Auditing and Accounting and it is
affiliated directly to the president of the Republic. And at some times it was affiliated to the Prime Minister's
office and there was a discussion in the past few years in Yemen on affiliating this body to the parliament, but
this hasn't been achieved.
And in the past, we established what we call the code for money, but up until now in Yemen, there isn't anything
done, I mean, nothing regarding controlling corruption. Any corrupted official in Yemen or any corrupted person
in Yemen can get away with whatever he does. This is the real situation. We haven't heard of any case where an
official at any level, not even a Minister, for example, say at the level of a general director, for example, the
parliament has the right to hold those people accountable, hasn't at all so far asked any government official at
any level regarding corruption, despite the fact that there are very good logical situations that would initiate
having such accountability.
And unless we have some sort of accountability, we won't have any sort of democracy, because we know that having
this peaceful exchanging of power is a very far away objective that so far cannot be achieved. So now you can say
that the independent parliament members are very minimum and the ruling party is the power in the country.
So this is the situation in Yemen, the public office in general is free and not accountable to anybody and we don't
have an independent judicial system. So I think that there is a complex problem in the legislation, in the law
and in the application. In order to have some suitable sound recommendation of this forum, we should provide the
criteria for a suitable independent judicial system in order to achieve democracy. Thank you.
Chair: We have one speaker and the -- well, we have five minutes left. My distinguished panelist to the
left would like to respond to some of the points that were raised. Let me defer to her and let her provide some
commentary on some of the points that were raised here and if there's time left, then we'll allow the two final
panelists to speak.
Desiree Bernard: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was just observing the discussions that have taken place and
there seems to be a definite emphasis on eradication of corruption in all societies. I think everybody concentrated
more on that than other aspects of the topic. It highlights the fact that corruption seems to be the root cause
of bad governance I would say in most territories and everybody seems to express concerns that checks and balances
should be put in place to control the rise of corruption, particularly by government officials.
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