The flood of drainage that have deeply penetrated into social life of our Mongolians, inundating corridors and floors of all government buildings and decaying our whole society rapidly, is the corruption and bribe. The corruption is originated from Latin word ‘corruptus’ meaning depravity, decay and bribe.
The history of mankind proves that a number of states and civilizations have discontinued to exist in the past, by decaying and decomposing not from outside but from inside. Only those countries that managed to establish proper standards of cultural and human relations capable to prevent the corruption before it happens or stop it as it happens, achieve more success than others, developing their economy intensively and making their population wealthy and happy.
It has been 25 years since world countries are ranked according to how the citizens of that country evaluate the corruption rate in government. According to the 2009’ Corruption Perception Index Survey conducted by the Transparent International involving 180 countries of the world, our country stood at 120th place together with Kazakhstan, while our southern neighbor is ranked at 146th and our northern neighbor at much better ranking or at 76th place. Though the corruption rate in China is twice less than in Mongolia, they fight the corruption with the force twenty times stronger than ours. “International Herald Tribune” Newspaper (Page 3, May 21st, 2010, IHT) published about thousands of government officials being sentenced for the crime of corruption in China. The Vice Minister of Supervision Hao Mingjin called a press conference where he stated that 3058 public officers including several city mayors were inflicted for corruption to various sentences till life imprisonment.
These officers were found guilty of corruption and swindle for abusing their power in distributing some US$386 million that the government allocated in connection with construction projects, land development, transfer of fixed assets and evacuation of residents. The “Associated Press” Agency warned that the government distribution of cash to population in connection with the regulations of fixed capital followed by rapid development of this country might aggravate the corruption which already widely spread, in which the Agency was right. “Communist” authorities started to acknowledge that the corruption is the biggest threat to their authority.
This communist country with a single political party system fully recognizes the corruption as their biggest enemy and is taking decisive actions to fight this. In our country with multi party system, the corruption has already spread to and invaded whole society and has turned into a widely-accepted normal standard of inter-human relationships. The two political parties that alternately ruled whole government, including executive and judiciary governance, have been encouraging the corruption instead of stop and tackle it.
Anti corruption reforms have a good chance of success only when they are moved by a top leader and persistent enough to overcome bureaucratic resistance and inertia according to experts. They also have to involve civil society and be free from political manipulation.
One clear example is that though many cases of bribery and corruption linked to central and local government officials are released by the press, the linked officials have become masters in ruling out them using other press and media. Because almost every press and mass media in Mongolia, particularly newspapers, television channels, are owned by a particular political party, all news about the corruption cases are all flash in the pain. Internal democracy of political parties has been also disappearing gradually. The method to internally bribe its members, who raise a certain question about responsibility and accountability by promising high positions, has spread widely. In this way, the corruption has become the biggest enemy of Mongolians.
Translated by P.Shinebayar
UB PostMay 28,2010