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Making institutions work

21 janvier 2013, 00:00

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No democracy can function without strong institutions. The strength of institutions rests upon those who are responsible for them. It is inevitable that pressures will be exerted upon institutions by those who believe that the positions or posts which they occupy give them a right of interference with anyone and anything.

This may be wrong in absolute terms but the persons at the head of institutions who are paid out of public funds to perform duties which they have to under the law must resist those pressures and, on occasion arising, denounce the pressures and the pressurers.

The United States has put in the public domain a host of information about government and other institutions which concern public governance. The Americans believe that good governance means letting people have access to information. Naturally sensitive security information for a major power like the USA will not be disclosed but everything else is available to the public. Even in India there is a law for the freedom of information and that law has been used to expose official wrongdoing. This is how a modern democracy has to operate. A Freedom of Information puts pressure on any Government to only take decisions which are in the national interest for fear of being found incompetent... or worse.

In Mauritius, despite expressions to the contrary, the Freedom of Information which is on the statute Book has never been proclaimed with the result that it is a dead law. No wonder then that the Government prefers to make confidential whatever agreement it signs in our collective name with foreign bodies and governments. This is bad governance and there can be no justifi cation for non-accounting for how public funds are used.

All this relates to governance issues. It is for this reason that, unless the Commissioner of Police gives firm instructions to his offi cers to act independently and fairness without giving any favourable treatment to anyone, he runs the risk of running down the institution of which he is the head. In England, recently the Police framed the former Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell, who had to resign. Evidence was fabricated and a politician was destroyed by the Police. In India, the Police has come under intense fire on account of failing to respond to the cries of women who are the victims of sexual violence. A Police officer was even killed during a demonstration. When public trust disappears, the time for the institution to vanish has come.

By not giving to the MP Deerpalsing the same treatment as that given to another MP, Pravind Jugnauth, the Police is demonstrably partial and unfair. The public is watching closely everything which is happening with and at the Police. We have had in the past Commissioners of Police who acted as puppets of the Prime Minister and we all know what fate they had. Until today within the Police force only one name of a former Commissioner of Police is remembered as a great Commissioner and that person is Commissioner Juggernauth. He has been dead a long time ago but good memories never fade.