Anti corruption law halted by Bolivian senate

They say that Bolivia is one of the most corrupt nations in the world and that corruption permeates every aspect of society, including significantly every layer of state institutions.

Listening to Rafael Puente, former prefect of Cochabamba, speak on TV last night about the judiciary, he repeated an often quoted saying in Bolivia with more than a grain of truth that goes like this: ‘Why bother hiring a good team of lawyers when it is just as easy to buy the judge?’

On almost every aspect of the bureaucratic machinery one is expected to pay ‘facilitation fees’ that ensure that a complex and lengthy bureaucratic procedure is expeditiously and favourably dealt with. I know because my wife’s residency application also included a couple of notes between the pages of her passport.

Bolivians laugh at the state of their country. Unfortunately the issue is no laughing matter and the current MAS government has done more than most to eradicate these deeply entrenched practices. According to Transparency International, although Bolivia has made improvements in the last few years, it still occupies position 105 out the 180 countries included in the organisation’s regular survey.

The introduction of the vice-ministry for transparency and the fight against corruption by the current government has given some results without sparing MAS supporters and officials who were investigated and fired after a job-selling scandal.

But corruption in Bolivia goes much further than just the abuse of public office for individual private gain. As the case of former prefect of Pando Leopoldo Fernandez showed, he reigned over a corrupt system that controlled every economic and political aspect of Pando. So for years he benefited from the rampant contraband towards Brazil, illegally sold and appropriated land in the region, and misused the resources of the state to enrich himself and to provide jobs and buy political support from family and friends. And when the local rural community started to challenge this state of affairs, he used those same resources to massacre them.

Things don’t end here. As this case shows, those who have come out in defence of Leopoldo Fernandez are the judiciary, including members of the supreme court, oppositions politicians, and private TV channels employing family members who were in some cases being paid by resources from the prefecture.

It seems therefore that corruption not only leads to private gain but that in order to maintain it, it requires the creation and maintenance of networks of power and influence that extend far and wide and include buying up political and police support, favourable press coverage and, when everything else fails, the support of corrupt judges. So corruption not only makes you rich but gives you public status, a twisted sense of your own importance and, in Bolivia at least, impunity.

Dealing with this tangle of influences goes much further than just removing a few ‘bad apples’ in the system. The clean-up will require a branch and root level reform of sectors like the judiciary, for example, that has become the biggest ally of the rich landowning, and often corrupt, elite that dominates regional politics in the opposition strongholds of the lowlands, an area which, like Santa Cruz, is increasingly being seen as the country’s money laundering, fraud and mafia centre.

This is why yesterday’s manoeuvring of opposition senators to scupper the approbation of a law permitting the investigation of illicit fortunes was so desperate. Their boycotting tactic was to refuse the debate, simply walking out of the chamber to ensure there was no quorum and that no vote could take place. The obvious conclusion from this is that they themselves have something to hide and know they are part of wider networks of corruption.

It is important that a revolution takes place in the political culture of this country that includes the removal from high office of an entire layer of scum. That is why the stakes are high and the approval of a new constitution this month is so important. In the case of the senate, new rules ensure that the election of members to this chamber is much more representative than is now the case and will not act as a refuge to an old guard that continues to obstruct by whichever means possible, the process of change in this country.

You might say that once the opposition is decimated at the ballot box, the new asamplea plurinacional will be populated by a new generation of public servants just as subject to the temptations of power. It might be, but what the new constitution clearly states is that, from now on, members of parliament will be subject to no form of immunity from investigation and prosecution from a judiciary that is to be entirely reformed and that will introduce a system of appointment by public vote instead of appointment from political friends.

So with the new constitution, the corrupt might try but won’t be able to hide.