Soon after the office of the auditor general made its report public stating that the amounts due to the government by numerous persons and institutions have gone up, Surya Nath Upadhayaya, the chief of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), has instructed the chief secretary, secretaries and departmental heads to create an effective mechanism for clearing such accounts immediately and to start the process of recovering all past dues. At a meeting the other day, the CIAA chief, pointing out that the past instructions had been ignored, warned of taking action for “not performing duty” against officials failing to implement the instructions. According to Upadhayaya, if these dues were collected, the country would not have to depend on foreign aid.

Chief secretary Bimal Koirala admitted on the occasion that though the secretaries were mainly responsible for recovering these dues, the fact that the size of the dues has been increasing shows their lack of commitment. No doubt, it is mainly the job of the secretaries to see that accounts are promptly settled according to rules. But Koirala, as chief secretary and also as the chairman of the committee which looks into these matters, cannot escape from his portion of the blame. This raises questions about the quality of his leadership of the civil service. Moreover, in the past he also held the post of finance secretary. If the size of dues under his ministry had decreased under Koirala as secretary, he would have something to show by way of example, but this was not the case.

As for the CIAA, it did little though its instructions had been ignored more than once. Shifting responsibility has become one of the hurdles to good governance in Nepal, so is the the making public of three years’ reports at once a setback to transparency and public accountability. The problem with our constitutional bodies is that their office-bearers have not lived up to the high expectations the people had from them when the Constitution made them fully independent and highly powerful. King Gyanendra’s recent remark that the CIAA has proved useless — made in reply to a question about the justification for his formation of the Royal Commission on Corruption Control— should pose moral questions for its office-bearers. Maintaining their general rising trend over the years, the unsettled accounts now stand at Rs.35.88 billion, according to the auditor general’s 2003/4 report. This means that all past meetings and commitments have gone in vain. The present government has pledged to crack down on corruption with an iron hand. Its performance will, however, be judged, among other things, by whether it can reduce the size of the dues to a negligible amount.