Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia - Ethiomedia

Justice Sector Corruption in Ethiopia 193
these organizations, this encourages additional freelance corruption on
the part of other members who know that all that matters is loyalty on
those cases that count politically.
In both Latin America and much of Africa, corruption is also found in
organizational management—misuse of budgets, manipulation of procurements,
and mishandling or theft of agency physical resources.
However, the most critical aspect is human resource policy and its use to
provide jobs for followers, create docile internal networks, or threaten
personnel who refuse to participate in corruption or countenance its
practice by others. Purchase of positions or their award against promises
of future favors is also not uncommon.
Unfortunately, reforming this area has proved difficult because doing
so would pose a threat to political business as usual. Throughout Latin
America, the introduction of judicial councils to recruit and discipline
judges and sometimes prosecutors has, as often as not, reproduced the old
party controls (Hammergren 2002). Laws have been manipulated to
ensure that the political elites keep their voice, or they have been circumvented
to ensure that the supposedly neutral members of selection committees
are chosen for party affiliations. And even when the judiciary,
through either the councils or the Supreme Court, increases or maintains
control of appointments when corruption has already infiltrated the
bench, these agencies may be no better than the politicians in discouraging
its proliferation. In many cases, the only significant change is that the
selection process is negotiated among various parties rather than being
controlled by one.
Universal concerns: Other system actors. Finally, the role of private
attorneys can hardly be overlooked. In many countries, they have stronger
political connections than the judges, so their efforts to influence judges
may be backed by implicit or explicit threats. Lawyers can also feed public
perceptions of corruption by telling clients they lost the case because
the judge was on the take or by collecting “bribes” that never reach the
bench. Because lawyers are usually licensed by government (or by the
courts), they are included in this analysis as “entrusted” officials.
Many justice systems have other actors in this category: nonpublic
officials who are licensed to perform certain public functions. In addition
to private attorneys, they include notaries; Brazil’s cartórios (who carry
out functions elsewhere performed by courtroom staff); the French
hussier (private bailiff); and court-appointed experts and officials responsible
for evaluating assets, administering receivership of companies