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Topic Discussion IV
Achieving Good Governance
Controlling Corruption, Improving
Administration
and Strengthening the Rule of Law
Room 1
(7 of 22 pages)
Well, needless to say, the topic that we have today achieving good governance
is, I think perhaps the most ambitious of all the four sessions. In essence, it's the some total of how governments
are organized, operate and manage. Corporate governance is characterized by adherence to constitutionalism. The
rule of law or accountability and transparency in providing for the public good. Corporate governance involves
all three branches of government, the laws and regulations that constitute the legal framework within which governments
operate and the human and financial resources that are essential to manage the affairs of government.
Many of the issues that are subsumed under the general topic of good governance were touched on in the previous
sections that I have attended, so I would like to try to focus the discussion this morning around three sub topics,
in order to have some control in the amount of time that we have left to come up with some conclusions and recommendations
that will be reflected in the proceedings and the declaration that will be issued at the end of the forum.
The first is strengthening the rule of law, which has been addressed this morning by our two panelists with the
concentration on judicial -- on the judiciary system. I would just pose it as a question that you could look at
from your own country specific experiences the following, what are the obstacles to and solutions for establishing
a fair, efficient and competent judicial system? Does that involve establishing a minimum professional standards
for becoming a judge, that the judiciary should be independent so it doesn't become politicized; to harmonize and
streamline your legal codes, because often the codes have become complicated webs of unclear, sometimes antiquated
and often times, a contradictory collection of legal norms; and to modernize the court system by installing new
technologies to make the court system for more efficient.
The second sub topic would be government administration and the question would be, what measures should be taken
to modernize the bureaucracy? Should it involve training? Should it involve providing for salaries that are at
least competitive? Two, what steps can governments take to reduce burdensome regulations and red tape. And three,
has decentralization lived up to its promise of improving the delivery of public services?
And the last sub topic that has been raised here this morning by both speakers and in previous sessions is corruption.
Corruption has the dubious distinction of being universally practiced. It knows no national boundaries. It can
take a variety of forms and occurs at all levels of society.
Corruption survives in countries where legal systems are either incomplete or evolving and the complexity, over
regulation and lack of predictability serve as fertile incubators for corruption to grow.
According to Dr. Robert Plicguard (ph), a noted international authority on corruption, the opportunity for corruption
is a function of the degree of discretion without accountability that government officials have over the services
or activities that private firms need to conduct their business. He defines corruption by the following formula,
C=M+D-A, that is corruption equals monopoly plus discretion minus accountability. And I would slightly modify that
formula in cases of what is referred to as grand corruption, that is corruption involving large sums of money and
I would put the formula as follows, C=M+D+G-A, which is corruption equals monopoly plus discretion plus greed minus
accountability.
And the question is the following, while it's not possible to eliminate corruption, can it be controlled by any
corruption laws and conflicts of interest regulations, as well as watch dog agencies and education campaigns?
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