FYI
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Title: RIGHTS: Transparency International Honours Whistleblowers
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 28 (IPS) - Transparency International (TI), the global anti-
corruption group, will present integrity awards at their annual meeting this
weekend to whistleblowers from Morocco, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and
Argentina who have exposed government wrongdoing at great risk to themselves.
The ceremony will mark the first of what the group plans as a yearly event
honouring ''the courage and dedication of individuals and organisations
fighting corruption around the world,''according to Peter Eigen, TI's chairman.
Indeed, two of the honourees will be represented only by family members. One,
Alfredo Maria Pochat of Argentina, was murdered in 1997 as a result of his
efforts to expose a fraud involving the diversion of millions of dollars in the
social security fund, while the recipient from Morocco, Army Captain Mustapha
Adib, remains in prison there awaiting the outcome of a deliberations by
a military court.
Sri Lankan Lasantha Wickremetunge, a third honouree, is the editor of the
Sunday Leader Newspaper which has exposed corruption in government
privatisation and arms deals, while a grassroots non-governmental organisation
(NGO) in the Philippines, the Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government
(CCAGG) has publicised graft in government infrastructure projects and become a
model for similar groups which have sprung up throughout the archipelago.
Berlin-based TI set up an Awards Committee last year chaired by Virginia
Tsouderos, head of TI's Greek chapter. ''It is high time we recognised the
courage of the ordinary men and women who dedicate their efforts to make
governments accountable,'' she said.
Indeed, establishment of the awards reflects the growing
importance that anti-corruption measures have assumed
internationally in recent years. TI, which has been known chiefly for its
annual rankings of countries in a corruption index, has played an important
role in lifting corruption on the agenda of the international financial
institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank.
As structural adjustment and other macro-economic reforms urged by the IFIs on
developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s failed to show hoped-for
results, these agencies have paid increasing attention to so-called ''
governance'' issues as an explanation
for poor economic performance.
As a result, new programmes have been developed to improve regulatory and
judicial systems, promote the rule of law, and ensure transparency in the way
public entities do business - all measures which can help prevent or expose
corruption in government.
''The international community has failed to recognise the risks people take in
whistle-blowing,'' according to Frank Morales, an analyst at the Government
Accountability Project (GAP), which provides legal and other protection to
whistleblowers within the US government. ''But now it's being addressed more
not just here and in other industrialised countries, but in developing nations,
as well.''
The GAP, for example, is involved in drafting model legislation to protect
government whistleblowers in Central American countries under a programme
sponsored by the Organisation of American States (OAS). South Africa, Morales
said, already has enacted such
legislation, while similar legal protections currently are being debated in the
parliaments of Argentina and South Korea.
The GAP also has begun publicising cases of individuals overseas who have been
punished for exposing corruption in government. The first case in its
international campaign involves Lupe Andrade, a Bolivian journalist elected as
mayor of La Paz who exposed, among other wrongdoings, the diversion of public
pension funds into
private accounts and the issuance of some 100 million dollars in illegitimate
promissory notes by a former mayor.
The government responded by accusing her of misconduct and, without according
her due process, has thrown her in jail where she remains today, says the GAP.
TI's new awards also are intended to draw attention to such cases.
''We have introduced the TI Integrity Awards to help raise the global awareness
of corruption to recognise the tremendous courage and outstanding
accomplishments of individuals and organisations who are working at the
grassroots level to curb corruption,'' he said.
Pochat, according to TI, dedicated his career - and ultimately his life - to
fighting corruption in Argentina. He was assassinated in Mar del Plata on Jun.
4, 1997, moments before he was to announce his discovery of a multi-million-
dollar fraud of the social
security system. To honour his sacrifice, the Argentine government named Jun. 4
as Anti-Corruption Day.
As a lawyer for the Argentine Central Bank in the 1980s, Pochat led
investigations into asset-stripping in more than 70 financial institutions.
In private practice beginning in 1995, Pochat took on the country's largest
corruption cases, including those involving health-care funds, privatised
companies, and the provincial and national judicial systems.
Adib first became a whistleblower in 1998 when he reported to then- Crown
Prince Muhammad a scheme by his superior officers involving the illegal sale of
fuel allocated to the air base at which he was serving. After an inquiry, the
officers were discharged from the
army, but Adib himself became the subject of harassment within the army. When
he complained to the French daily Le Monde in December 1999, he was arrested
and sentenced to five years in prison by a military court.
His case has attracted the attention of human rights groups abroad, and, during
a hunger strike launched last May, the Moroccan Supreme Court last June struck
down the sentence and returned the case to a military court which has not yet
issued a final ruling.
Wickremetunga, a lawyer as well as a journalist, has long resisted any
government curbs on the media and was one of the most outspoken critics of the
government's efforts last spring to censor the media's war as a result of
which, according to TI, the Sunday Leader received a six-month banning order
which was
reversed by the country's Supreme Court Jun. 30.
Since 1994, when Wickremetunge became the newspaper's editor-in-chief, it has
specialised in reporting on high-level corruption cases some of which have
resulted in defamation cases brought against him, death threats against him and
his family, and even physical violence, including an attack with automatic
weapons.
Founded in 1986 as an off-shoot of the provincial chapter of the pro-democracy
movement that ousted former President Ferdinand Marcos, the CCAGG consists of
about 1,000 members dedicated to monitoring the design and implementation of
infrastructure projects. Its first investigation of uncompleted projects of the
Department of Public Works and Highways, resulted in the
suspension of 11 government engineers later found guilty of dishonesty and
misconduct.
Its work, which has earned its members threats from time to time, has exposed
serious cases of graft and corruption, and its existence now, according to TI,
serves as a deterrent to corruption. (END/IPS/HD/jl/da/00)
Origin: SJAAMEX/RIGHTS/
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[c] 2000, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
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