Never has this blog written an
open letter or public request to any of the many Presidents, Prime Ministers or
Cabinets whose governance (for want of a better description) it has lived under
over the past decade and more in Ukraine.
The first reason for doing so
is that once a reader has seen one Verkhovna Rada or Gov UA email address, it
is very simple to work out the email address for any of them (no differently
from working out the email address for somebody at the State Department or FCO
etc.) and private communication has always remain the preferred channel of this
blog.
Secondly, it would indeed be
conceited to think that such a lowly foreign language hobby blog may get more
than an infrequent and/or accidental visit from policymakers and/or legislators
in Kyiv (discounting the diplomatic corps that seeks out what little English
language “non-party line” commentary that spews forth from Odessa due to the
absence of major “western” consulates in the region. In short an OSINT
source with friendly “useful idiocy” potential).
However, even lowly hobby
bloggers occasionally write for money – and naturally to a far higher and
heavily cited standard than that which appears in a free blog. Indeed
that writing can be academic and has been published by academic journals.
Facts and statistics even in a
post-fact political world still have some resonance. Being sarcastic, how
else to produce unreliable facts from reliable figures – or vice versa?
Undoubtedly the Ministry of
Justice is very busy. Its reform agenda is vast and the obstructionism it
faces is as robust as it is never ending. Yet the role of the Ministry of
Justice in combating corruption cannot be overstated.
Clearly there is pressure upon
the “rule of law” ministries and State institutions to deliver anti-corruption
results. Indeed the blog’s social media time line and “favourite sites”
are forever recording and highlighting the arrests of politicians and civil
servants for corruption. The beginning of a process for each and every
cases- but not a result.
The Ukrainian anti-corruption
fight will not be measured in the number of arrests, but in the number of
convictions.
Naturally media and political
attention focuses upon the high profile cases – or currently upon the absolute
lack of convictions in high profile cases. Important as they are, they
too will only make up part of the picture when it comes to the fight against
corruption.
Having searched in reasonable
English, average Russian, and admittedly woeful Ukrainian, the blog is yet to
find a consolidated list of corruption convictions – be it official statistics
or a “best capture” effort by bloggers/civil society/media.
Somebody in the Ministry of
Justice must have a list of every conviction for corruption of political and
civil service figures across the entirety of Ukraine – if for no other reason
to have a list of names that will subsequently be banned from holding office
for a period of time following any conviction.
It would perhaps assist
Ukraine in making its case that it is indeed fighting corruption and not just
orating rhetoric and passing legislation that remains unimplemented – and
certainly assist academic observation, even if empirical in nature – to provide
easily located, easily accessible simple corruption conviction statistics.
The number of convictions for
corruption per month (or per annum at least). The judicial
verdict/punishment handed down. The region/oblast. Ideally the
specific court and/or the judge too would be enough.
How else can even empirical
observation consider why one region may be far more active in arriving at
convictions than another? Is there a consistency in the sentencing –
regionally or nationally? What of proportionality? Is one court far
more “forgiving”/lenient than another? Would any “unofficial punishment
banding” become empirically apparent correlating to the level of the convicted
in the bureaucratic machinery – or alternatively to the level of bribe received
for their nefarious acts?
Naturally nobody would expect
the Minister to know these statistics without having to refer to somebody in
the “boiler room” of the Ministry of Justice – but somebody in the “boiler
room” will know – and if nobody knows, then how is the Ministry of Justice (or
any other ministry) measuring the fight against corruption where it counts –
and the reactive side of the equation counts only in convictions (hopefully
with proportionate and consistent sentencing).
(Admittedly it is far more
difficult to accurately measure the proactive preventative side of the fight
against corruption because if proactively preventing it then logically it
didn’t happen to be measured – an inaccurate science no different in
difficultly to accurately measuring any crime prevention initiative.)
Thus this entry is aimed at
those that may have contact within Ministry of Justice (rather than personally
at the Minister of Justice who won’t read it) – hopefully one of the fairly
frequent diplomats that drop by will raise the question of where to locate
collated, official, easily accessible, frequently updated statistics regarding
convictions (not arrests) for corruption and accurately recorded sentencing
handed down.
Perhaps somebody within the
EU, EU Member States, US or Canada that are rightly spending taxpayers money to
support the fight against corruption have such statistics available? If
not, how are they measuring the fight against corruption if convictions are not
part of that benchmarking?
There is surely publicly
available, updated statistics for the convictions and sentencing of public servants
– for they are a matter of public record somewhere – and as headline grabbing
as even a solitary conviction and sentencing of a sacrificial “big fish” will
be (if it happens), the statistics sufficient to paint a much broader empirical
picture, by region and nationally, would be gratefully received.
In the fairly certain
knowledge that there will be no response to this plea/ admission of search
engine defeat, perhaps the erudite readers will perchance furnish links to such
hidden statistical knowledge that despite searches in 3 languages have thus far
failed to produce the desired results?
Obliged in advance to any that
may assist.
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