SRP Critical of Anticorruption Draft Provisions

The anticorruption draft law, which has been more than 15 years in the making, will finally be debated at an Extraordinary Plenary Ses­sion of the National Assembly next week after arriving on lawmakers’ desks late Thursday afternoon.   

“It was supposed to be [discussed] in April, but now it will start on March 10—we feel that first come, first served,” Council of Min­isters spokesman Phay Siphan said on Friday. “That law is a very special one.”

The draft, which provides for the creation of two new anticorruption bodies, has already come in for criticism from opposition lawmakers and civil society representatives, who say it has some major flaws.

SRP parliamentarian Son Chhay —a longtime advocate of an anticorruption law who submitted his own draft to the National As­sembly last month—offered a harsh critique of the draft law at a Friday morning press conference at SRP headquarters, predicting it would be “made to serve the political purpose.”

One of Mr Chhay’s main objections was that the draft does not offer a precise definition of corruption, opening up the possibility that the new anticorruption bodies could apply the term loosely.

A previous version of the draft law defined corruption in its second article, calling it “an illegal use of an individual’s function, duty, power or influence to obtain personal benefits in the form of money, objects or other materials, for that person or any other person or entity.”

But the final draft of the law omits a definition, drawing instead on around 40 relevant offenses from the penal code passed last year, including misprocurement, extortion, various types of bribery, and “the business of active influence.”

“It is easy to find the definition of corruption-we can just simply Google it and find out-and yet we dare not put it [in the anticorruption law],” Mr Chhay said.

The lawmaker was caustic as he described the proposed composition of the two anticorruption bodies proposed in the draft.

“The composition of officials in the National Council on Anticorruption is very strange,” he said. “The 11 members are representing 11 institutions inside the government…. When the council members represent [government] institutions, how can they crack down on any officials inside those institutions who commit corruption?”

Mr Chhay pointed out that the draft doesn’t stipulate the new officials should be skilled, experienced or knowledgeable about corruption, or that they should be “clean” of any corruption offenses themselves.

“This is a weak point we worry about, that this National Council will have no activity but could just become defendants of the officials from their institutions,” he said.

Sok Sam Oeun, the director of the free legal aid Cambodian Defenders Project and a spokesman for CISA, a civil society coalition that advocates for government accountability, said he was not concerned about the lack of a definition of corruption since the draft law clearly refers back to the penal code.

“This law is really only the law to create the anticorruption bodies, so I don’t think the definition of corruption is important for the draft law, because they put it in the penal code already,” he said.

“In fact, many offenses relating to anticorruption in the original [draft law] were taken out and put in the penal code,” he added.

More important, Mr Sam Oeun said, are the two most novel aspects of the draft law: the establishment of anticorruption bodies, and the provision that government officials, politicians, military personnel and civil society leaders must declare their assets.

But he agreed with Mr Chhay that the seeming lack of independence of the new National Council was a major concern.

“In fact, we need independent people, but I do not think so,” he said.

Thun Saray, the president of rights group Adhoc, also flagged this as a problem, echoing Mr Chhay’s point that all but one of the members of the National Council on Anticorruption will be government-appointed.

“I think the composition of the commission is not independent-they seem like political appointees,” Mr Saray said.

Mr Saray also criticized the asset-declaration mandate for its lack of transparency.

“The draft law doesn’t allow the declaration of assets to be put in public-we should let the public monitor also, not just the commission alone,” he argued.

It remains to be seen whether the ruling CPP will actually consent to allow the council to monitor the financial activity of high-ranking officials, Mr Saray said.

“If the law is implemented according to objectivity by this body, I think it’s quite a good step for Cambodia, but my concern is that the people [on the council] have to give fair monitoring to corrupt activity,” he said.

“The credibility of this commission will be seen after six months or one year.”

 

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