Chief Ombudsman Cyanzaire outlines priorities

Earlier this month, Aloysia Cyanzaire was sworn in as the new Chief Ombudsman replacing Tito Rutaremara, now a senator. The country’s first female Chief Justice brings wealth of experience to her new office. In an exclusive interview with The New Times’ Felly Kimenyi she spoke about the mandate the Ombudsman’s Office; a new draft law that seeks to give the organ prosecutorial powers; the code of conduct for senior public officials; among others. Below are the excerpts.The New Times (TNT): As you enter the new office, tell us about your priorities... Aloysia Cyanzaire (AC): First of all, this is an institution I found on a very right path towards delivering on its mandate and principally, I will have to build on what has been achieved by my predecessors, and together with my team, I intend to continue championing mainly the education process, letting Rwandans know their rights and that we are there to fight all forms of injustice and corruption.As for corruption, this is not a vice one can say that you will completely eliminate... in a society where you have people, such traits as corruption are likely to remain but we want to put it to the very minimum level possible.Rwandans need to understand that the services they get should be offered without any duress, without paying any kind of prior inducement. I and my colleagues have to inculcate in Rwandans the culture of reporting, in the event that they are asked to pay for a service they are actually supposed to receive free of charge, instead of keeping quiet. This is, of course, not a war we can fight alone, we need to engage many institutions we need the private sector mainly because what happens is that you find most people who fall victim or those that actually pay the bribe are people from the private sector. You have business people who don’t want to pay taxes or contractors who want to fraudulently win tenders, so the private sector is really important. Our priority will also be on the way services are rendered, especially in the public domain and we need constant monitoring. In most cases, you find people dragging their feet in providing a particular service which might lead a person seeking the service to believe that they need to first give a bribe to get the service.All that has been said above are in terms of prevention. But another area where we want to strengthen is in punishing those that have been found culpable of offering and receiving bribes. We intend to strengthen cooperation with other institutions in charge of this, like the police, and prosecution and courts.TNT: Speaking about courts, tell us about the proposal that intends to give the Ombudsman’s office powers to recommend to Supreme Court for an adjudged case to be reviewed?AC: Indeed we are looking at having the powers to look into that a case that has exhausted all legal avenues in conventional courts. In case a person feels there was foul play during the proceedings in the courts, and petitions us, this is also provided for in the new law governing the functioning of the Supreme Court, where there is a provision outlining the conditions which the Ombudsman may base on recommending the reviewing of a case.Some of the preconditions include a scenario when it emerges after a case has been disposed of by a judge, and it later emerges that this judge was, for example, implicated in corruption with regard to that particular case, the Ombudsman’s Office may, after thorough investigations, request that the case to be reviewed by the Supreme Court.Another instance is when a trial has been found to have been characterised by obvious injustice. There are about three preconditions on which to base to recommend retrial. This is going to be done through writing to the Chief Justice, who will in turn commission his or her own enquiry to establish if the case merits retrial. And the trial will only be reviewed by the Supreme Court.The rationale behind this is premised on experience, where you find some cases, despite having gone through all necessary courts, injustices prevailed through all proceedings, either through omission or commission.TNT: It is also being proposed that the Office of Ombudsman gets prosecutorial powers...AC: It is still a proposal in a draft law that is currently before parliament. It is an idea that came up to give the Ombudsman’s Office the powers to investigate and prosecute before courts of law certain cases. This should, however, not be misconstrued to mean that we were usurping the powers of the Office of Prosecutor; these are going to be extremely exceptional cases. For example, as you know the prosecution deals with very many cases, that are not limited to corruption, in case there is a corruption related case that requires to be prosecuted with utmost urgency, and prosecution is not in position to handle it expeditiously, this is where we will chip in to prosecute the case.Another exceptional circumstance is when, for example, it is the prosecution itself that is being accused, this is when we will use these powers but these, I stress, will be extremely rare cases, so we are not about to take over the work of prosecution.Another related mandate that is also part of the draft law is the powers to execute court orders. In a situation when the relevant authorities have dragged their feet in executing these judgments.We receive many complaints where the local leaders who are mandated by law to oversee the execution of court decisions deliberately drag their feet in ensuring that winning litigants get what they are deserve. The law will, therefore, give us the powers to execute the judgement where it has been established that the authorities did not do their job and go ahead to hold them accountable.TNT: There is the Leadership Code of Conduct that was recently made public. How will it be enforced?AC: This is already in place and we have a department that is specifically charged with overseeing the enforcement of this code. They are already working and we have registered some cases from different channels like operational audits that are made on different leaders in different capacities.For example, we have at least 76 cases that have been investigated, like leaders who disown children born out of the wedlock, others involve unfair dismissal of employees at different public institutions, there are also cases of misconduct of leaders outside their workplace such as deliberate failure to pay debts and having extramarital affairs.After investigation of all cases 54 were disposed of in a way of offering advice, where for instance, a person who had a debt was advised to pay up and those who unfairly dismissed employees to reinstate them. On four cases, we requested relevant authorities to take action because we found serious mistakes had been committed by the leaders but I will not give names. Cases concerning eight leaders were dismissed as baseless.The reason why for most cases we preferred to advice is because in nature of our work, we always prioritise mediation and indeed most of the cases did not call for punishment.TNT: An example of those cases for which you prescribed punishment to the culpable ….AC: An example is a leader who ventured into business activities. Our leaders are prohibited from engaging in business, another example is those who deliberately, during wealth declaration, decide to to provide are false wrong information about the wealth they have, there many other instances but these are just examples.TNT: Which leaders are supposed to be bound by the leadership code?AC: Right from the senior leaders to the level of director general, in between you find ministers, permanent secretaries, governors, parliamentarians and mayors.TNT: Speaking of wealth declaration, available statistics show that the number of officials who do not declare wealth has been on the riseAC: It is not true, the number has almost been constant, all in the area of 400 and this is because of different reasons but the most important thing to mention here is that all these should not be misconstrued to be leaders in different capacities.In fact, all people in leadership positions, starting from the top-most, including the President, ministers , lawmakers, Supreme Court judges, Permanent Secretaries, Governors, Mayors and Directors General and others have almost all declared their wealth.The biggest numbers of those that do not declare are mainly those in remote areas, where there is limited access to the internet and with the new system of online declaration, for instance head teachers from far-flung areas.This is something we are working on to ensure that these people are facilitated because in most cases it is not that they do not want to declare, it is because they get shortcomings in terms of facilitation to do so. TNT: What methodology do you use to verify property declared by officials, especially property that can be out of the country, or how do you know in case an official has property abroad and does not declare it at all?AC: After the declaration, there is a team that verifies the declarations made, if it is physical property, like houses, they actually go there and inspect them. For the financial declaration, we work with banks to verify if indeed the amount declared is what these people have.Concerning property abroad, we use our embassies in most cases but for those who may choose not to state that they have either property abroad or money in foreign banks we have many ways of finding out including people that come to us with information. When we get this information, we work with our embassies to verify such claims.There is also a way local banks collaborate with their counterparts in other countries, these are some of the methods we use in finding out whether a person misled us on the kind of property they own of the country.TNT: It has been claimed that little action is taken regarding holding accountable senior leaders, going by the lists published in newspapers containing persons convicted of corruption, you only find very junior people like local defence, police and others….AC: The reports by the Auditor General or even the operational audits we conduct, the biggest number of cases we find in the institutions we audit are attributed to mismanagement, like expenditure without supporting document or irregularities in tenders, not outright corruption.The other issue is a problem of the law we had in force a few years ago, until 2007, where matters like flouting tendering procedures was not a criminal offence. This has been amended and is now a crime punished by law.The issue therefore is, any person who flouted tendering procedures before 2007, cannot be held criminally liable, because this were considered as an administrative error but after the new law, a lot has been done; senior officials have been prosecuted and it is public information.For those cases that we publish, where you find village leaders, local defence or police officers and of course citizens, these are what we call petty corruption, which involve cash, in most cases these happen at local administrative units or even in lower courts where judges are caught red-handed receiving bribe from litigants.You, therefore, hardly find senior leaders in that kind of corruption but what I can say is that corruption is very complex in nature because it is something that happens between two individuals who definitely do not want to get caught which makes it hard to unearth what we call ‘grand corruption.’But what I can tell you is that levels of corruption in this country, as indicated in various reports including those conducted by international bodies, are very minimal, the few cases that we register among senior leaders involve mishandling of tenders either by omission or commission and we are doing all we can to ensure that even these are brought to light and uprooted.TNT: What are the challenges faced by your office?AC: The biggest challenge as said above are intricacies involved in investigating corruption and this is not something that we face in Rwanda only; even in the most developed countries with all sorts of sophisticated technology, finding evidence for corruption requires tedious work that calls for collaboration from every citizen.We even get alerts that in such and such a place there is corruption but then proving it becomes difficult or even others deliberately refuse to give us information. It therefore calls for continuous education to ensure that all citizens come on board to fight this vice.I think the law that is in parliament currently, which seeks to protect whistleblowers will come in handy once passed because it will, among other things, protect the identity of such people so that they can freely provide the necessary information.Other challenges is the overwhelming work at this Office because we do the work that is normally done by two separate institutions that is, the work of Ombudsman of fighting all forms of injustice, and fighting corruption. And this involves a lot of work and with the available resources’ you find it overwhelming at some point.We also have the issue of some citizens who refuse to accept decisions by lower authorities even when they have been justly taken and push all the way to the top—the Ombudsman’s Office‑only for us to conduct investigation and find their problems had been objectively adjudicated.TNT: You being the immediate former Chief Justice tell us about what you look back and say this is what I am proud of in my previous assignment AC: There is a lot that the went through since 2004 when I assumed office. During that period, I don’t think I would be wrong to state that it was in a deplorable condition with very limited and unprofessional human resource which is rooted in the historical context of the country, corruption levels were also high in this field and the level of confidence the population had in the judiciary was very low.As of today, we have a judiciary that is actually professional, both in terms of levels of education and work experience. An example I can give is that today, all the judges at least have a bachelors degree in law, many others have attained higher levels of education. Previously, of the 800 judges we had, less than 100 had a bachelor’s degree.Regarding the confidence people currently have in the judiciary, statistics indicate that it has gone up to over 70 per cent which is a great achievement even when compared to other countries in the region, this is a high percentage. The same applies to infrastructure development of judicial establishments, we are now proud to say that all courts have permanent addresses unlike in the past where courtrooms were synonymous with every rundown public structure in the country. Regarding technology, we are coming from an era where the judiciary was the only organ in the public sector, a few years ago, that was using typewriters but now you have video conferencing facilities, internet is connected at every court chambers and judges use electronic filing and litigants can electronically file their lawsuits.These are just a few achievements by the judiciary that I can proudly say I was part of this great transformation.TNT: Little is known about you to your assignment, prior to your appointment first as Deputy Chief Justice and later Chief Justice....AC: Before being Chief Justice, I indeed served as Deputy Chief Justice in charge of Gacaca Courts when they were still under the Supreme Court. At that this time, we had six deputy chief justices and each was in charge of a particular department prior to which I was a judge.And before my assignments at the Supreme Court I was Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Justice. In the same ministry, I have also been a director of different departments, including the directorate in charge of supervision of courts and prosecution which was then under the ministry.I also once served as the head of the legal department, which ideally was performing the duties of attorney general, to represent the interests of government in court cases, and inspected the work of non governmental organisations among other attributions.Thank you.

Insight

Chief Ombudsman Cyanzaire outlines priorities