Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, July 3:

While a CPN-UML leader said that democracy was indispensable for controlling corruption; the other speakers at a programme today were of the view that the anti-corruption movement

is being politicised. Speaking on the occasion of World Anti-corruption Day, however, all of them accepted the fact that corruption cannot be controlled in the absence of transparency.

“Corruption will institutionalise in an autocratic regime, which is never transparent,” said the UML leader, Yubaraj Gyawali, who has also been given a clean chit by the Royal Commission for Corruption Control (RCCC) recently. Giving a suggestion to strengthen democracy to reduce corruption, he said: “Several issues of corruption were raised by the Parliament in the past, thus maintaining transparency due to which a few corrupt politicians were brought to book.”

“As the RCCC has been formed outside the existing system, it is politically prejudiced,” said Gyawali. Accepting that most of the corruption cases were found in the political sphere, former minister Devi Prasad Ojha said: “It doesn’t mean that there was no corruption before 1990. Even some NGOs are not transparent which indicates at corruption.” He suggested the media to treat even the corrupts cruelly. Niranjan Thapa, the Law Reform Commission chairman urged the parties to cooperate with the anti-corruption institutions. “What ever the institution, the parties should not be prejudiced. Whether it is the RCCC or the CIAA, it should cooperate.”