Deputy of Senate Calls on NUG leaders to begin fighting corruption from Presidential Citadel

The deputy of Senate House urged the National Unity Government (NUG) leaders, President Ashraf Ghani and the Chief of Executive Officer, Abdullah Abdullah to start fighting against corruption from Presidential Palace and Executive office for a better administration and transparency; otherwise Afghan people would not trust and believe the process of fighting against corruption.

Slogans of fighting against corruption heard since 14 years ago, but nothing still have been done regarding the issue and people always complaint of a widespread corruption in government institutions and involvement of government officials in corruption.

This comes as President Ghani in his recent speech was said to consider corruption a stigma for the system and announced of Jihad against corruption.

“I demand the two leaders to start fighting against corruption from Presidential Palace and continue it to other government institutions till they can gain people’s trust,” Muhammad Alam Izad Yar, deputy of Senate said.

The new government has both a practical and philosophical challenge to reduce corruption. At the moment people do not believe that the government can fight corruption so they accept that it will remain. If the government took practical, well-publicised steps to tackle it, perceptions would begin to change.

Meanwhile, the Transparency Administration has also voiced concern over corruption in government institutions, saying a number of powerful with political influence support corruption in Afghanistan system.

Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Supposedly North Korea and Somalia rank one and two; so Afghanistan is the third most corrupt nation in the world.

A huge concern among many diplomatic and military leaders is that Afghan corruption drives people to support the Taliban. Many cite corruption as the number one threat to the government of Afghanistan; with the Taliban as a lesser threat.
Throughout the past 13 years, high levels of corruption and bad governance have seriously thwarted the international community’s efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.

Millions of dollars that were allocated for the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan were misused or wasted.

One particularly disheartening instance was the disappearance of $1bn in the 2010 Kabul Bank scandal, in which a cohort of unscrupulous businessmen and politicians carried out a Ponzi scheme in the largest private Afghan bank.

At present, the government is preoccupied with the country’s worsening security situation, economic recession, and peace talks with insurgents, which have all but monopolised the its attention for the past several months. Nevertheless, the leadership must not lose sight of other important issues like systemic governmental failures and corruption.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the last few decades of war have seriously disrupted its mainly agricultural economy.

The illicit opium trade is the one economic activity that not only survived, but flourished, during and after the war. Now it accounts for more than half of GDP and is said to involve corrupt government officials at every level. Tribal warlords control the poppy-growing areas, using the proceeds to fund their militias and arms purchases.