Immunity is keeping Nemesis at bay

The tabling of a draft bill to grant immunity to members of Government is a development that attracts nothing more than a smirk. First, let’s see where the initiators of the draft are coming from.

They saw how easily the legislature gave in to the amendment of the constitution to grant the President immunity from prosecution even after he leaves office – a sign of his enduring fear of what could happen to him if he left the trappings of power alive.

This is the fear that underlies sit-tight dictatorships in all African countries, especially former French colonies, where Presidents are answerable to no-one but themselves, and so use their absolute powers to do absolutely despicable and unconscionable things.

So, their boss having sailed through the legislative net with such ease, members of Government could muster the pluck to attempt foisting something similar on parliament.

And why do they need it? Just like their boss, they have been operating in an anything-goes environment without the checks and balances that regulate and regiment the serious management of public affairs elsewhere.

Over the last few years, however, they have seen their peers wind up in jail, having drawn unchecked from seemingly bottomless public coffers, on the assumption that their benefactor’s leniency was infinitely elastic; and that went on until they were ambushed by the auditor.

Even those who had claimed privileged relations with the appointer, or had rendered him some service or other, have learnt that not only was the man answerable to none but himself, his loyalty is to none but himself.

And such has been their fright that many tend to consider a ministerial appointment as the fatal first step on the road to Kondengui. And since few, if any, have either the gumption to turn down the appointment or the probity to manage within the norms, they need some kind of immunity to curb the fatality.

The current existence of ad-ministrative courts does not make things any easier for unscrupulous public servants. They are now liable not only to prosecution by the state, but to court action by individuals irked by any abuse on their part. So, again, immunity is needed as a safety net for the ap-prentice acrobats.

The laughable part is that they dig up this immunity idea from the ashes of a phoenix they have long buried. They definitely have read somewhere that in Southern Cameroons (and eventually West Cameroon) Secretaries of State (the equivalent of today’s ministers) had immunity.

But Ayah Paul Abine, just burst their bubble with the reminder that this immunity was by dint of their having first been elected as Members of the House of Assembly.

So maybe, for this expediency alone, our friends would now rather Cameroon were a Parliamentary democracy than a Presidential autocracy. Or can they eat their cake and have it?

All in all, recourse to immunity is flight from social accountability and should not be condoned. In principle it should enhance a Government’s productivity by enabling public servants to invest in public business the time and energy they would waste in court.

It should liberate their minds so they can give their all to improving the lot of the citizens and the image of the country, unhindered by fear of some skeleton tumbling out of the closet in broad day-light.But all that were an imaginary prize too paltry to offset the huge pillage that is incident to all confidence without control.

Put together the booty from all the armed robberies that have taken place in this country in the past ten years, they are a trifle compared to the money looted in a few years by just one of the many white-collar thieves the President entrusted our fortunes to, in the name of ministers and General

Managers.

An immunity law would there-fore be nothing short of license to despoil our national heritage, and our lawmakers are duty bound to reject the bill off and. Indeed, it is within their bailiwick to ensure that there is sanity in the conduct of government business.

The State Audit Department and the National Anti-Corruption Commission, CONAC, are instruments at their disposal. If they develop cold feet in the use thereof, it might well be for fear of coming to equity with unclean hands. And in that orbit of our governance structure such dithering is nothing short of culpable compromise.

Today it is an open secret that public contract awards are key among the perks that accrue to their office; and as a general rule, the poor implementation of these contracts has become a national pandemic.

In another maneuver that smacks of culpable compromise, the Executive approves for each of them a budget of 8 million FCFA for micro-projects in their various constituencies. Following the results of a recent survey, only 40 percent of the MPs could identify by name the projects on which they spent the money.

The rest either refused to be questioned or were content with the blanket label of “social projects”. The compromise here lies in the institutionalized lack of accountability which makes the fund look like a personal allowance.

So, can our MPs come to equity with clean hands on issues of immunity? Or has the Executive put a bone in each of their mouths to keep them growling but unable to bite? Do they have dirty files which can be brandished to silence them each time they start opening their eyes too wide? It may well be time we revisited the whole matter of immunity across the board.

And to avoid the law-makers being judge and party in the exercise, the involvement of other stakeholders such as the Bar,

NGOs and socio-professional and faith-based groupings is imperative.