"We are the world", US Aide for Africa, 一首非常感人的歌曲，當年我也買了一卷CBS 出的卡帶，可是後來從電視上看到後續的追蹤報導，大量的食物在碼頭腐壞，有許多錢買了洋酒和步槍.... 國際組織的義工還要賄絡官員才得以把物資送到災民手中。這些政治人物和軍人的良心到底在哪裡呢？
在全世界最窮的地區，有著全世界最驚人的貪瀆。這不僅僅是社會問題，應該也是文化上的問題。這些被污走的錢，其中大多是世界各國的捐款呢！無怪乎辛巴威的首席反貪污官員Mark Chona 會要那些富國的大使們，別保持沉默，發揮你們的影響力。
全球每年有超過一兆美金的錢是用來賄絡的，一兆美元已經超出我的理解範圍了。上網查了 一下台灣Exports (2007) $246.7 billion f.o.b., 所以是超過台灣四年的出口總值。
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這是昨天紐約時報網站國際新聞的頭條。真是巧，同一天台灣也有政治人物告起訴其貪污的檢察官新聞。雖然這則紐約時報新聞是今天才讀到的，因時差的關係，告檢察官與這一則新聞都是同一個日期。
國內一大報的社論是下這樣的結論：「整個司法檢察系統都該徹底思考：到底發生了什麼事，讓民眾對司法改革望之如此之殷，卻求之而不可得？」司法制度永遠無法完善，所以需要人來權衡。正義女神雖然是矇著眼，持天秤的和執寶劍的手，都是受到心和腦的指揮的。我不相信她是盲目的，手中的天秤將會告訴她如何使用寶劍。
但這一切只是為了追求正義嗎？這又何嘗不是一個活生生的權力展現呢？要這些檢調人員罩子放亮點？雖然我應該相信他只是要一個正義，但他手下又有多少人會揣摩上意，而去運作這個案件呢？用他自己的言論來檢視，又發現其立場時常改變，我又怎麼去相信呢？
「和大怨，必有餘怨，安可以為善？是以聖人執左契而不責於人。有德司契，無德司徹。天道無親，常與善人。」天下之大，司契者寡，而司徹者眾。
南非 a new crime unit with less statutory protection from political interference was stripped of the authority to both investigate and prosecute crimes.可是有立法保障又如何？我們的檢察總長不就是有立法保障嗎！還不是發動總總媒體攻訐，散佈謠言，直屬長官還不是不斷給予壓力。不問是非黑白，只有黨同伐異，這或許就是政治的本質，而不是甚麼「管理眾人之事。」
大道廢，有仁義。智慧出，有大偽。六親不和有孝慈。國家昏亂有忠臣。
話題扯遠了！
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每每讀到一些先進國家的報導，就覺得我們離「先進」或「已開發」好遙遠。可能問題是更基本－－「我們的國家」。
幾年前小姪女問：「為什麼卡通裡的人總是要拯救地球？」想當然耳，那是美國的自以為是。不過盱衡國際現實，美國人的負擔還真大！難怪他們總是創造出拯救地球的英雄人物。就算是為了美國自身利益，至少他們關心地球遭逢的總總劫難。就如非洲反貪勢力消退，美國的媒體如此詳盡的追蹤報導，難怪牛仔會很忙。
Battle to Halt Graft Scourge in Africa Ebbs
Mariella Furrer for The New York Times
Above, a hand-painted anticorruption sign in Lusaka, Zambia. Agencies investigating wrongdoing by powerful politicians have been undermined or disbanded and their leaders have been dismissed, threatened with death and driven into exile.
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: June 9, 2009
LUSAKA, Zambia — The fight against corruption in Africa’s most pivotal nations is faltering as public agencies investigating wrongdoing by powerful politicians have been undermined or disbanded and officials leading the charge have been dismissed, subjected to death threats and driven into exile.
“We are witnessing an era of major backtracking on the anticorruption drive,” said Daniel Kaufmann, an authority on corruption who works at the Brookings Institution. “And one of the most poignant illustrations is the fate of the few anticorruption commissions that have had courageous leadership. They’re either embattled or dead.”
backtrack vi. 1. 沿原路返回 2. 撒手不管(置身事外) 3. 收回前言;出爾反爾
poignant adj. 尖銳的;強烈的;深刻的;深深打動人心的;辛辣的;痛快的;(氣味)濃烈的,辣的,刺激舌頭[鼻子]的 Experts, prosecutors and watchdog groups say they fear that
major setbacks to anticorruption efforts in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are weakening the resolve to root out graft, a stubborn scourge that saps money needed to combat poverty and disease in the world’s poorest region. And in
Zambia, a change of leadership has stoked fears that the country’s zealous prosecution of corruption is ebbing.
scourge n. 1. (用作刑具的)鞭子 2. 懲罰的工具;懲罰 3. 天譴;苦難的根源;災禍
vt. 1. 鞭打,鞭笞 2. 嚴懲;嚴斥 3. 使痛苦;折磨
sap vt., vi 1. 在…下挖坑道,挖坑道逼近(敵方陣地) 2. (在…下面)挖掘使倒塌
3. 逐漸削弱[損害],侵蝕
n. 暗中的破壞,逐漸的侵蝕[損壞]
stoke vt, vi 1. 給(爐子等)添加燃料,司(爐) 2. 燒(火);使大吃; 3. 司爐;燒火,添燃料ebb
vi, n. 1. 落潮,退潮 2. 減退,衰退期
3. 落潮;(勇氣、活力、威勢等)衰退,衰弱,消失;(身世等)衰落,衰亡The perils of challenging deeply rooted patterns of corruption have been brought home recently with the suspicious deaths of two anticorruption campaigners. Ernest Manirumva, who worked with a nonprofit group, Olucome, investigating high-level corruption in Burundi, was stabbed to death in the early morning hours of April 9. A bloodstained folder lay empty on his bed. Documents and a computer flash drive were missing, said the president of Olucome, Gabriel Rufyiri.
And in the Congo Republic, Bruno Jacquet Ossebi, a journalist who had announced he was joining a lawsuit brought by Transparency International to reclaim the ill-gotten wealth of his country’s president, died of injuries from a fire that raced through his home in the early hours of Jan. 21.
The broader anxieties about Africa’s resolve to combat corruption have emerged from troubled efforts in several countries.
In
oil-rich Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, where watchdog groups say
efforts to combat corruption are backsliding, Nuhu Ribadu, who built a well-trained staff of investigators at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said he fled his homeland into self-imposed exile in England in December. Officials had sent Mr. Ribadu away to a training course a year earlier, soon after his agency charged a wealthy, politically connected former governor with trying to bribe officials on his staff with huge sacks stuffed with $15 million in $100 bills. Mr. Ribadu, who was dismissed from the police force last year, said he had received death threats and was fired upon in September by assailants.
fled, pt and p.p. of fleeassailant n. 攻擊者,襲擊者,施暴者, 詞鋒銳利的論戰者
adj. [古] 攻擊的,敵對的 assail vt.“If you fight corruption, it fights you back,” he said.
In
South Africa, home to the region’s biggest economy, a new crime unit with less statutory protection from political interference was stripped of the authority to both investigate and prosecute crimes. It will take over from the Scorpions, the prosecuting authority’s elite investigating unit that had achieved high conviction rates and built potent corruption cases against Jacob Zuma, who became president of South Africa in April, and Jackie Selebi, the national police commissioner and an ally of former President Thabo Mbeki. The Scorpions were abolished last year and the country’s chief prosecutor, Vusi Pikoli, who had pushed forward with both cases, was fired.
“
Even people of good will would be slow to take on people in high places again because history will have told them it comes at a high cost,” said Wim Trengrove, a private lawyer who assisted the state with the prosecution of Mr. Zuma.
And in
Kenya, the economic anchor of east Africa, scandals have continued to flourish and anticorruption prosecutions have languished since John Githongo, who was the country’s anticorruption chief, sought safety in self-imposed exile in England in 2005. Aaron Ringera, who apparently advised Mr. Githongo in taped conversations in 2005 not to push for prosecutions of President Mwai Kibaki’s ministers, is the current anticorruption chief. Mr. Ringera said in an e-mail message that Mr. Githongo had twisted advice he offered him “in his own best interests.” In an interview, he said he had recommended prosecuting eight ministers, but had been blocked by either the courts or the attorney general.
The search is on for more effective ways to tackle corruption, including intensified legal efforts to prosecute multinational corporations that pay the bribes and reclaim loot that African political elites have stashed abroad.
stash vt. ,vi. [口] 將(黃金、貴重物品等)收藏起來,藏匿,隱藏,存放起來
n. 1. [美‧口] 藏匿處/ 藏匿物 2. [美‧俚] 自己用的麻醉毒品 Transparency International’s suit seeks to force the French justice system to investigate how the leaders of Gabon, the Congo Republic and Equatorial Guinea and their families acquired tens of millions of dollars in assets there. Still others say rich countries and international organizations that provide billions of dollars in aid to African countries each year must more vigorously use their leverage to make sure aid does not fuel corruption.
Based on his finding that
more than $1 trillion a year is paid in bribery globally, Mr. Kaufmann, formerly director of global programs at the World Bank Institute, estimates there are tens of billions of dollars of corrupt transactions each year in sub-Saharan Africa.
Mr. Githongo, who failed in trying to fight corruption from the inside, has returned to Nairobi to start a nonprofit group to mobilize rural people to press politicians to clean up a rotten system.
“Going after big fish hasn’t worked,” he said. “The fish will not fry themselves.”
Zambia recently won rare convictions against former military commanders and Regina Chiluba, the wife of its former president, on corruption charges. Frederick Chiluba, president from 1991 to 2001, will himself face a verdict in July on corruption charges. His sumptuous wardrobe — Lanvin suits, silk pajamas and handmade Italian shoes of snakeskin, satin and ostrich — became an emblem of greed in one of the world’s poorest countries.
Mariella Furrer for The New York Times
The handmade Italian shoes of Frederick Chiluba, the former president of Zambia, became an emblem of greed.But anticorruption leaders say they sense less commitment to tackle corruption since the election of President Rupiah Banda. “I’m inside,” said Maxwell Nkole, who leads a task force set up to investigate the Chiluba-era abuses. “The tempo, the intensity to tackle corruption is dropping.”
The Banda administration vigorously denies that charge, and says it will prosecute officials who stole $2 million from the Ministry of Health. At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from the United States’ Millennium Challenge Corporation that Zambia is eligible for. On a recent afternoon, ambassadors from rich nations, the United States and Britain among them, mingled at a party on the lawn of Mark Chona, the first chief of the Zambian anticorruption task force. In welcoming them, he issued a sharp warning.
“Your money is being stolen,” he said. “Don’t sit silent. You don’t know how much influence you have.”
A version of this article appeared in print on June 10, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/world/africa/10zambia.html?ref=world
The story is taken from The New York Times at above-stated URL. The copyright of this story belongs to its original owners. The author of this story and The New York Times are not involoved with, nor endorse the production of this blog.
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