In the Egyptian capital –Cairo, Friday 14/02/2014, the works of the third and final regional seminar were concluded with the participation of more than 60 representatives and experts from the International Transparency Organization for combating corruption which was organized by the civil community, governments and the private sector from all over the Arab region to discuss ways to combat political corruption and to enhance integrity and transparency in the political positions. Palestine was represented by Aman Coalition -the national branch of the International Transparency Organization- the Commissioner of Aman, the Executive Director and the Director of the programs and projects.
The International Transparency Organization urged the governments of the Middle East and North Africa to improve the integrity and transparency in their political operations .Peter Egan, one of the founders of the International Transparency, said " the constitutions of Egypt and Tunisia have been issued recently which means that the opportunity is available to stress the integrity and transparency for those who were assigned to represent the voters who elected them ". He added that " the researches of the international transparency showed that the political parties and the parliaments are considered to be among the most corrupt institutions in the region, and so the governments should emphasize the prosecution for the political corruption and should put an end to the impunity of the corrupt officials from punishment to show sincere commitment to the democratic transition.
The Commissioner of Aman, Dr. Azmy Al-Shuaiby, opened the main session saying that the Arab citizen rejects the current position to stay as what settled by the state for decades either it was dictatorial state or failed in the democratic transition, emphasizing that the efforts to combat corruption for 15 years are still stuttering and unable to make a difference because of the political regime which works to thwart these efforts.
Dr.Ahmad musleh made a presentation for the preliminary results of the national studies about the political corruption in the Arab region which adopted a common set of indicators including the principle of separating of powers , the right to access to information, appointments to senior positions ,effectiveness of the control bodies ,management of public money , general elections and other.
The participants were divided into four working groups to discuss the mechanisms of prevention and prosecution of illicit enrichment, systems of disclosures and control over the conflict of interests, reinforcement of integrity and transparency in the electoral systems, in addition to the transparency of funding and control over the political parties.
In her intervention to the working group of the political funding ,the executive director of Aman ,Ghada Zghaier ,emphasized the importance of restructuring the political parties to ensure democratizing of these parties , passing positions and activating the systems of internal control in these parties .She also stressed on the transparency of the budget of the parties and the mechanisms of the budget exchange and disclosures in periodic reports issued to their affiliates and to the public and official control bodies.
After in-depth deliberations of the working groups ,the participants in the seminar recommended criminalization of illegal gains of public officials and allowing the confiscation of money and properties earned illegally ,criminalization of political parties that affect voters by illegal aspects ,implementation of legislations about conflict of interests related to senior government officials ,issuing rules to prevent the abuse of power by the officials during their term of office that significantly participate in combating corruption in addition to the need for the combating corruption bodies to cooperate with the electoral bodies in controlling the funding of the election campaigns .
It should be noted that the International Transparency held a series of regional seminars in the context of the significant political changes which the region has witnessed since 2011.These transitions opened the way for the civil community concerned with combating corruption in order to play a stronger role in determining the future of the communities of the region and ensure activating more just, transparent and accountable regimes .This seminar came in the context of the regional project led by Aman since three months with the support of the International Transparency which includes Lebanon ,Yemen ,Egypt ,Tunisia, Morocco and Palestine .The project aims at preparing analytical studies about the reality ,forms and effects of political corruption and then comes to a comprehensive regional report that makes recommendations and axes of intervention to the Arab fight against corruption.
