Iraq’s new prime minister has made an emphatic speech promising to root out corruption. He has declared that no public official, no matter how senior, will enjoy immunity from prosecution. He has also announced sweeping reforms and measures aimed at reinforcing the state’s oversight capacity. One by one, members of the political class have pledged their support for the initiative.
To clarify, the prime minister I’m referring to here is Haider Al Abadi – and the year is 2014.
It’s been nine years since Mr Al Abadi left office, yet corruption remains entrenched in the system. Prime ministers before and after him have made similar promises, only to fail to deliver on them.
This brings us to the current incumbent – Ali Al Zaidi – who has also declared war on graft, and even initiated a crackdown on a number of corrupt officials. Surely though, he will know that history is not on his side.
In fact, many analysts expect Mr Al Zaidi’s ongoing efforts to fail as well. They point out that his choice of targets appears to be political – the accused are all mid-level figures aligned with political forces that are currently out of favour in Baghdad. If that view is accurate, Mr Al Zaidi’s campaign is probably less about financial crime than it is evidence of the political system adjusting itself internally.
But if Mr Al Zaidi wants to make a lasting impact on corruption and the state’s ability to deliver on its basic promises, he will need to adopt a completely different approach.
The mere fact that prosecutions of state officials depend on the Prime Minister’s personal intervention is definitive evidence that the system is broken. The key to making a lasting approach is not to focus on individual cases of corruption, but to improve Iraq’s accountability framework in way that would reduce opportunities for graft over the long term.
Corruption in Iraq is endemic mainly because of the control that political parties exercise over government ministries. After each election, parties divvy up ministerial and other official positions, and through those positions exercise near-total control over public procurement. Contracts are then granted to relatives and colleagues who establish ghost companies that have very low capacity to deliver, with most funds then being siphoned away.
At lowers levels of government, unqualified and unmotivated party loyalists block reform at every turn. They leave in place enormous amounts of red tape that practically forces ordinary people to offer bribes just to get the documentation they need to get on with their lives.
One reason why this happens is that the Constitution grants Parliament full control over all state institutions. But the country’s top legislature is populated by undemocratic parties, which have milked the system for their own benefit.
The bad news is that the constitutional system will almost certainly not change, and the parties are not going anywhere, at least for the foreseeable future. Yet Mr Al Zaidi does have scope to make some marginal, but not inconsequential, changes.
One way to do that is limiting the scope of Parliament (and therefore that of the political parties) to influence hiring in the public sector, which would limit opportunities for graft.
A public sector commission exists in accordance with the Constitution, but as with everything else, it is dominated by Parliament and has close to no impact. As Prime Minister, Mr Al Zaidi can compel the commission to adopt stringent requirements on how senior civil servants are recruited, and then ensure that these are adopted and strictly enforced by all ministries.
Mr Al Zaidi should also seriously consider setting up a team (often referred to as a “Delivery Unit” in comparative practice) tasked with following up on the prime minister’s priorities across ministries and departments. Those changes would make it more difficult (although not impossible) for political groups to engage in nepotism. This, in turn, would help to gradually reduce the number of obviously unqualified officials.
The other challenge for Mr Al Zaidi is tackling the courts.
The court system is, theoretically, already empowered to investigate allegations of corruption and prosecute relevant officials, but its track record is unimpressive given the scale of the country’s problems. One of the main constraints on the courts is political interference, which officials in the judiciary have complained about on numerous occasions.
In fact, the judiciary’s leadership often participates in high-level political meetings, which is highly unusual in comparison to other countries. If Mr Al Zaidi is serious about acting against corruption, he should move to sever the link between the political class and the judiciary. A high-level policy speech and a few carefully timed prosecutions for influence-peddling in the courts would go a long way to ensure that judicial independence is more respected than is currently the case.
Moreover, the courts are notoriously tight-lipped about their own internal challenges – a wholly unhealthy practice. Obvious lapses in performance are not scrutinised and, instead, are left to fester for years, making it even more difficult for the courts to deal with state corruption.
This can be partially fixed through a number of common-sense mechanisms that many of the world’s most respected democracies adopted years ago (including the US, France, the UK and Germany). One option would be to ensure that all internal investigations within the judiciary are carried out publicly. In other words, include non-judges and laymen in any investigative panel examining judges’ records, and ensure that the results of these investigations are published.
Finally, one of the courts’ other long-standing problems is the concentration of institutional authority, which creates backlogs and conflicts of interest, particularly when some bodies are supposed to be exercising oversight over others. The institution of the public prosecutor operates under the supervision and control of the judiciary, which is rare in democratic systems.
In Iraq, such an arrangement has made it challenging for prosecutors to do their job. Mr Al Zaidi would do well to organise a reform effort that would isolate prosecutors from the judicial council, which would require creating a separate institutional structure for public prosecutors along the lines of what exists in Spain and Portugal. Specially trained prosecutors could then act unconstrained by the judiciary’s leadership or by the political influence that bears down on it.
Until these, as well as other, actions are taken, corruption will go on unchecked. The same cycle that Iraqis have witnessed since the current Constitution was adopted in 2005 will continue – prime minister after prime minister.
Mr Al Zaidi has the ways and means at his disposal to break this cycle. Unlike his predecessors, he should actually use them.
