By Adia Jildo
The first Deputy Speaker of the Transitional National Legislative Assembly (R-TNLA) Nathaniel Oyet Pierino said the fight to end corruption is stiff as culprits of the acts are not being held accountable before the court of law.
Rt. Hon. Oyet said the fight which started since 2006 till date might have been some reasons that led to the suffering of the people due to the 2013 war, after 75 names of some politicians and members of parliament emerged from a gruesome report alleged for corruption by the National Audit Chamber.
“By the time we were getting independence, there were already outcries,” he said. “There were even executive orders of zero tolerance to corruption. The government was trying to clean itself. 75 names from among us emerged.”
He said acts such as “Abuse of powers whether financial, social or political or undermining public institutions,” made the fight stiffer.
He further stressed that corruption has taken another toll of itself as nepotism, tribalism has taken over in governance.
Meanwhile the President of the court of Greater Equatoria Circuit Justice, Stephen Simon Benjingwa said failure of the parliament to produce corrupt officials have yielded more gruesome corrupt persons in the government.
“Lack of accountability has made more people to be more corrupt. The anti-corruption is spending every day because of lack of accountability,” he said.
He called on the committee to take the case of corruption seriously citing presence of laws against corruption and the need for the parliament to take to court those cases.
He said a few cases have reached the court with less than 10 officials being tried for embezzling public funds adding that the 2013 war was a result to fight corruption and zero tolerance to corruption.
For his part, John Agany Deng the chairperson of the information committee at national assembly said efforts to stopping corruption is almost impossible as the government have within its systems corrupt officials who have come back in the agreement.
“For that matter the government has again run into hot soup of again bringing the same element of corruption,” he said. “Efforts given by the government to minimize corruption is what gives development in the end cost. It is something that country can rationalize.”
““The corrupted element is there including in the government,”
He said corruption of some leaders count a cost on all the corrupt officials.
“The government needs to have a political will otherwise; it will be very difficult for us to fight corruption if there is no political will.” Agany said adding that there’s a need for a less count on corruption for the implementation of the peace agreement to be successful.
He said the challenges to take perpetrators were due to their occupation in positions needs making it hard for them to appear before the court.