By Emma Kakololo
WINDHOEK
Transparency International, a civil society organisation that leads the global fight against corruption, recently released its Annual Global Corruption Report.
This year the report mainly focuses on the judicial system, which it says has been facing a crisis of confidence in many parts of the world.
In Africa and Latin America the picture looks grim where about one in five of people who had interacted with the judicial system had paid a bribe. In Bolivia, Cameroon, Gabon, India, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan and Paraguay the figure was more than one in three court users.
A majority of people in all but one African country polled (South Africa) and one Latin American country (Colombia) perceived the legal system/judiciary to be corrupt.
Eight of the 10 countries with the lowest levels of judicial corruption are European, led by Denmark, where 81 per cent of respondents perceive little or no corruption in the legal system/judiciary.
In 35 countries, respondents singled out judges (from a list that also included: judge, police, prosecutor, lawyer, court staff, witness/jury and ‘other’) as the actors they most needed to bribe to obtain a ‘fair’ judgement.
Judges were followed by lawyers (top of the list in 10 countries), police, and prosecutors while in Latin America and Africa police were most frequently identified as the second most likely to be bribed. In the Balkans, respondents said prosecutors were the second most likely to be bribed.
The report states with regard to independence of the judiciary: “In sub-Saharan Africa the problem is especially serious.”
It further states that some of the African nations have however moved in the direction of judicial independence at the initiative of the judges themselves, who have negotiated with political leaders and appealed to public opinion.
“Those with political power sometimes support independence, however. A free-standing judiciary may act as a guarantor of special-interest deals enacted by past governments,” reads the report.
The report lists several measures that might help to reduce judicial corruption which are amongst others: increasing the remuneration of judges and prosecutors; reducing procedural formalism; reducing the time needed to arrive at judicial decisions; and getting rid of the monopoly of prosecution agencies to initiate the prosecution of suspects.