Corruption in Comoros

The Customs Office in Moroni

The Union of Comoros is ranked by Transparency International as one of the most corrupted countries in Africa. Corruption is everywhere in the country, particularly in the Public Administration. There are three main causes of corruption in the Comorian Public Administration.

The civil servants are the agents who work for the government. This means their sole income is the salary they receive from the government, which is actually very low. To illustrate, a bachelor graduate starts with a salary of 500 U.S. dollars at the beginning of his career. This salary is not sufficient for the public agent to look after his family because of the high cost of living in the country. In fact, one of the underlying causes of corruption, according to many experts, is low public officials’ salary. They argue that public officials generally accept a low salary only if they already know that they can accumulate bribes. For instance, many Comorian graduates in economics or finances generally accept low wages in the Comorian Customs Office because they know that they can collect bribes.

Additionally, high inflation is an integral part of the civil servant’s difficult life. While prices are increasing on an average of 15% yearly, the governmental salary stagnates. Lastly, there is not a credit card system in the Comorian banks that allows the public employee to survive temporarily by buying goods or services and paying for them later. Because of the low salary, the public civil servant is inclined to corruption by misusing the public utilities such as office supplies and equipment, the telephone, the car, or trying to get money from people for any service offered.

Irregular payment is another factor that causes corruption in the Comorian public administration. Since the independence of the country from France in 1975, the civil servants have never been paid regularly because of insufficient revenues in the government’s budget. Every year, there are at least three or four months the government does not pay. In order to survive, the public agent is obliged to borrow money from friends or traders. Consequently, many agents are deeply in debt. As a result, stealing and selling office supplies and equipment are common. For instance, many used government vehicles that are supposed to be repaired are sold to friends and traders. 

Last of all, impunity for the corruptors encourages others to do the same thing because they are sure that the law will never punish them. To illustrate, some ministers, many public company managers, and public office directors are accused of mismanagement or bribes with traders and foreign investors. They are sometimes suspended and replaced, but never judged by the justice of the country. For example, in the 1990s, a former finance minister who was accused of taking bribes from a foreign company stated in the media that he had just taken a little bit. He was then nicknamed ‘‘Mr. Little Bit,’’ but he has never been judged.  Recently in 2007, a former governor got an 18-month suspended prison term and a fine for fraud. There were also charges of corruption among the security forces.

As has been noted, corruption in the Comorian public service is due to low salary, irregular payments, and impunity among the civil servants. In 2019, the Union of Comoros was ranked 153 out of 180 countries by the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index survey. Since its inception in 1995, the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which is Transparency international’s flagship research product, has become the leading global indicator of public sector corruption. This corruption harms the development of the country and weakens the state.

In 2010, the members of the Comorian Parliament legislated against corruption. In order to enforce the law against corruption, the Comorian government has recently set up an Anticorruption Committee. Since its creation in 2010, thirty cases of corruption have been revealed in the public administration. In December 2011, a religious scholar implicated in an alcoholic beverages company trying to intervene for the reopening of its activities, was arrested, judged and sent in jail. After a new trial on appeal, the jury found a very little evidence against him. The religious scholar was hence released on February 2012. However, for many other cases, the Comorian justice has done nothing until now.

Recently the General Accounting Office was hearing many dignitaries and former officials about the eventual misuse of many millions dollars generated by the sale of the Comorian citizenships between 2009 and 2011. The hearing resulted in the arrest of the former Director General of the police. He was released on bail. He was then successfully elected Member of Parliament in 2015 and 2020. A former president of the Union of Comoros was arrested and put in jail without trial since 2018. The Anticorruption Committee was dismissed in 2016 by the Azali Assoumani regime.

Today, the government faces several challenges in terms of poverty, household wastes, education, youth unemployment, health infrastructures and pandemic diseases such as malaria, coronavirus, etc. Many people think that the Comoros cannot economically emerge in its 2030 agenda with incompetence and corruption. Can the Comorian government meet these challenges? Time will tell.

The Comorian Blog, July 9, 2020

Chami Mouzawar

Contributing writer

 

 

The Catalyst of the Comorian Independence

Abdou Bakari at home in Mitsamiouli (pics. Chami, 2011)

Abdou Bakari Boina is considered by the majority of the Comorian people as the catalyst of the independence of Comoros. It was in October 1974, when he came back in Comoros to participate in the referendum campaign about the independence, organized by the French administration. Many people gathered in the Moroni–Hahaya Airport to welcome him. He was then brought in the shoulders of many Comorians from the airport until the Shalma place in Moroni down town where he held with another leader called Ali Soilihi the first meeting for the referendum asking the Comorian people to decide if they want to become independent from France or not.

His happy childhood  

Abdou Bakari Boina was born in 1937 in the northern small village of Kuwa where his mother in Ngazidja* hails. His father was from Mitsamiouli. After his primary studies in Mitsamiouli, he was accepted in the middle school known as ‘‘the Regional School of Mitsamiouli’’ under the status of ‘‘indigent child’’. His famous classmates are Mtara Maecha, Hachim Dada, Mohamed Fazul, Jean Mchangama, to name but a few. After his success in the middle school in the 1950s, he was selected to go to Madagascar for a teaching training program from 1955 to 1957. He came back in his country as a primary school teacher at the end of 1957.

His job as a teacher

Abdou Bakari Boina was appointed to Moya district in Ndzuwani* to teach between 1958 and 1960. It was there that he took his first wife, Nissoiti Ismael, a daughter of a notable of Vassy near Moya. From this marriage he has got three children.   In 1962, he was transferred to the island of Zanzibar which was a British colony in East Africa. His mission was to teach French in the ‘‘Comorian School’’ for the children of the Comorian community of Zanzibar. In 1964, he moved to Dar-Es Salam, the capital city of Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in East Africa. In Tanzania, he got married two times and got two children respectively from a Tanzanian wife and another wife from Indian origin. When he came back in Comoros, he was married to Moinaécha Aboudou, a daughter of a notable from the city of Mitsamiouli and cousin of Dr. Mtara Maécha, a political leader.  From that union, he got four children. Abdou Bakari Boina has always refused to ‘‘do the great marriage’’. ‘‘It is not a problem of means, but a question of principles’’ he said.       

His political movement   

The idea of independence comes from Abdou Bakari Boina. When he was in Ndzuwani, he saw how natives of this island were badly treated by the French colonists. Many peasants had lost their lands confiscated by French farmers. During his holidays in 1963 in Comoros, he took that opportunity to lead an underground campaign for the independence of his country. Many of his political friends have been arrested, sent in jail and others have gone exile. In Dar-Es Salam, the 25 year- old politician already launched his political movement called Molinaco (Movement for the National Liberation of Comoros) with two friends of Comorian origin. Molinaco was recognized by the authorities of Tanganyika in 1963. Abdou Bakari Boina was very critical of the local government run by President Said Mohamed Cheikh under the Internal Autonomy in the French Republic. According to Abdou Bakari, the problem of Mayotte* started when the President decided to transfer the capital of the country from Dzaoudzi to Moroni without preliminary consultation of the population of this island.

              Although Molinaco was opposed to the local government of Ahmed Abdallah, his political movement was very glad when the latest declared unilaterally the independence of Comoros in 1975.

His career as ambassador

              One month later, Ali Soilihi, a young leader helped by France, overthrew the father of the independence. Abdou Bakari was personally against the coup d'état but accepted to work with the new revolutionary regime.

Abdou Bakari (left) with his political friends at Molinaco Head Office in Tanzania in the 1970s

He was then appointed roving ambassador and was at the origin of many diplomatic ties between the Comoros and the People’s Republic of China and many other countries.

After the regime change led by the French mercenary Bob Denard in favour of Ahmed Abdallah in 1978, ambassador Abdou Bakari was imprisoned during three years. In 1982, he was set free without trial and proposed to take the job of counsellor under the Abdallah administration. But Abdou Bakari had his say. First of all, he could not consider his comrades who were still in jail as criminals. Secondly, he would never consider the French mercenaries who worked in Comoros as technicians and collaborators.  Finally, he would never say something bad about the former revolutionary President Ali Soilihi.  His conditions have not been accepted by the conservative regime of Ahmed Abdallah, of course. He finally got a job in the public oil company Comore-hydrocarbures.

His career as an opposition leader

In 1993, he was elected MP (Member of the Parliament) of the opposition in the Cembenoi district under the administration of President Said Mohamed Djohar.  In 1996, under the President Taki Abdoulkarim regime, he became governor of the island of Ngazidja. For him, it was just a job of a civil servant. He did not have a real power because he was not elected by the people, but just appointed.

After the last coup d'état of Colonel Azali Assoumani in 1999, a military officer came to see him for advice. It was the only contact he had with that regime. Abdou Bakari is still very critical of the Comorian new constitution of 2001 which gives large autonomy to each island and less power to the federal government. “It was like a child with three dads. Who will he obey?” he asked.

His political achievements

Abdou Bakari is today satisfied of his job. He is glad to be alive and to see how the independence is managed. For him, many things have been done since 1975. “At the beginning of the independence, there were only five doctors of Comorian origin. All the traders were white French. Today, there are about two hundred doctors, many Comorian are in the import-export business and the University of Comoros is managed by Comorian citizens only” he said.

Abdou Bakari did not know personally Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, the first moderate Islamist President of the country between 2006 and 2011. He thinks he had some good ideas but lacked experience and good will.

He also criticizes the young leadership for not having patriotism. The problem today, argues Abdou Bakari, is corruption, feudality and mismanagement. He advices the youth to be united against island divisions. The independentist leader lives now in his city of Mitsamiouli with the wife of his fourth marriage of1976. He does not benefit any retirement pension. In fact, he was fired from the public service in January 1965 because of his political activities in Dar-Es Salam in favour of the independence of his country.  The former emblematic leader of Molinaco passed away in 2018 and was buried in the city of Mitsamiouli. 

July 2, 2020  

Contributing writer                                                                    

Mouzawar Chami

* Notes

The archipelago of Comoros consists of four islands: Ngazidja, Ndzuwani, Maore and Mwali. Their French names are respectively Grande-Comore, Anjouan, Mayotte and Moheli. The four islands were French colonies from 1842 to 1975. After the independence from France in July 6^th 1975, Mayotte is still under the French colony, but its status is challenged by the Union of Comoros.

Covid-19 in Comoros

Jack Ma's donation is distributed in the 3 islands of the Union of Comoros(Alwatwan pics)

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the Director–General of the World Health Organization (WHO). He is upset that the coronavirus is far from being eliminated. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, worldwide deaths from the virus have exceeded 500,000 and confirmed cases have reached 10 million on Sunday 28 June, 2020. And the U.S, Brazil, Russia and India are the most impacted countries.

Economic and social consequences

In Comoros, schools and mosques are shut down by the government since March 2020. Wedding ceremonies and funerals are limited to 20 people. The economic and social consequences of the coronavirus pandemic in the country are huge. In fact, many people have lost their jobs in public and private companies. Others are furloughed. Food prices have surged since the holy month of Ramadan. The government imposed a Curfew from 8pm to 6am.

 International assistance

The country has received many aids from local and international organizations as well as from friendly countries. Jack Ma, the Chinese founder of Alibaba.com was the first to send masks and drugs to the 53 African countries. The Chinese medical materials for the Comoros consist of 500 suits, 1,000 masks for medical use, 300 infrared thermometers, 480 goggles and 500 surgical gloves. Ma’s aid has been distributed to the 3 islands of the Union: Ngazidja, Ndzuwani and Mwali. Recently, Madagascar has also made a donation to Comoros by sending natural and organic drugs to the Comorian government. The kingdom of Morocco has granted a ton of masks and drugs to our country. The France embassy in Comoros has done so by sending some packs of paracetamol pills and tablets such as doliprane, dafalgan, etc. to some public hospitals.

National solidarity

In the country the OPACO, the Comorian Employer’s Federation and SYNACO for the Traders’ Organization have given protective materials such as soaps, bleaches, buckets and water tanks to many villages and cities in their efforts to prevent the spread of Covid-19.  The Comorian Bankers and Financial Institutions’ Association known as APBEF has also granted 3 million Comorian francs to 3 hospitals in the country: Samba Nkuni in Ngazidja, Bambao Mtsanga in Ndzuwani and Fomboni hospital in Mwali. Comorian diaspora in France did so by helping many villages and cities.   

Back to school    

In order to save the academic year, the government has decided to reopen this 1^st July 2020 some classes to finish and complete their programs. Dr. Tadjidine Youssouf, member of the Scientific Committee, explains in a video on a Comorian social media what should be done in order to make the back to school successful on 1^st July 2020. He said that every student should wear a mask during class, wash regularly his/her hands with chlorinated water and respect physical distancing. “It’s up to parents, school directors and teachers to take their responsibility,’’ he said.  According to the Comorian Ministry of Health’s Report, 293 people tested positive on 30 June, 2020. And the pandemic has killed 7 people in the country since the first confirmed case on 30 April, 2020.  

The Comorian Blog, 1 July, 2020

Chami Mouzawar

Contributing writer