Communist China Vs Christian Nagaland
For those of us in Nagaland or even mainland India, the news about a court in China, sentencing former Police Chief Wang Lijun to 15 years in prison for corruption will come as a shock. The particular news has been splashed across the world in the last few hours with wide interest on how the former Police Chief helped expose one of the Communist party’s biggest political scandals in decades— the murder of a British businessman by the wife of his former boss - rising political star Bo Xilai. Until the case was exposed, Bo was considered a top contender for the Politburo Standing Committee, the team of nine politicians who effectively rule China. China's Communist Party is expected to meet at its 18th National Congress next month to announce who'll occupy the top positions. But it is obvious that how so ever powerful one may be, no one is above the law—at least in Communist China. In fact the disgraced Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai, has been stripped of his titles in April because of an unspecified “serious breach of party discipline” and it is most likely that Bo will be shunted out of any public office. What we can gather from all this is that although China does not practice democracy or the fact that there is nothing Christian about the Communist Party that rules the country, there is accountability in the system and the people who run these institutions have integrity. They are able to take accountability for past actions, admit mistakes and try and fix them.
Now coming to the case against the former Police Chief, the charges included defection, bribery, abuse of power and, as state media put it, bending the law for his own selfish ends. Doesn’t this sound very familiar? In Nagaland these corrupt practices are taking place all the time. In China, depending on the amount involved and the seriousness of the case, bribe-taking can carry the death penalty. For bending the law, the former Police Chief received seven years sentence while for defection and abuse of power, he was given two years sentence each. He was also stripped of his political rights for one year, meaning that he cannot vote or contest for public office. So you see in places like China, Hongkong, Singapore or Middle-East, punishment is not only clearly defined but conviction is swift. If we can add here, the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is popularly regarded as a successful model in fighting corruption and one of the success factors is its three-pronged strategy - fighting corruption through deterrence, prevention and education. Of the three, deterrence is seen as the most important and emphasis is given to investigating corruption. How can we deter people from being corrupt? The answer is to make corruption a ‘high risk crime’.
In our own Nagaland, everybody talks about fighting corruption. However what is missing is strong political will and clear cut public policy to take on corruption. A few years ago the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) had circulated a “Zero Tolerance Action Plan on Corruption” to all the State governments. Although some good steps have been suggested, the particular document must be gathering dust in the office files of our government. As for political will among our predominantly Christian leaders, the less said the better. As mentioned several times in these columns, the significance in tackling corruption, the Chinese way, is the manner in which their leadership has taken up corruption as a major political task, to be addressed at the highest level. This underlines that corruption is actually a political agenda, usually rare for any political leadership to take up but which the Chinese are determined to pursue in order to uphold integrity of its people. The latest conviction of a former Police Chief of the Chinese Republic is definitely shocking for Christian Nagaland but it should open our eyes at least that we are failing.
