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One year after the presentation on the half cycle, the project reforming the Anti-Corruption Poles Act (PAC) was finally adopted by the National Assembly on the evening of Wednesday 30 June. At second reading, MEPs approved the text after the Senate had tabled two amendments. A reform that has been repeatedly criticized by civil society for which the text would weaken jurisdiction.
as reported from Antananarivo, Laure Verneau
The Anti-Corruption Pole, PAC, is one of the pillars of the fight against corruption in Madagascar, but the reform puts it in jeopardy. No more confiscation of badly received goods before sentencing. A reasoned decision, according to majority member Idealson, which carries the text for one year: “A person who is already accused will be removed definitively in the absence of a verdict pronounced by a justice. It is contrary to the sacred principle of the presumption of innocence set out in the Constitution. ”
Other measures taken: reduction of the mandate of the General Coordinator and Judge and the elimination of economic and financial crimes from the PAC’s area of competence. Illegal interest, embezzlement: so many crimes that the judges of the PAC will no longer be able to sanction. The law is controversial, especially since the text was adopted in just 24 hours by the National Assembly last year, before the Senate postponed it to the current parliament’s session.
For Harimahefa Ratiaraisoa, national coordinator of the anti-corruption poles, it is not a setback for the judges to no longer be able to confiscate property: “Because we do not confiscate before sentencing, the property will simply disappear in such cases. Nature. This is not good for the fight against corruption. “
While the President of the Republic has advocated zero tolerance for corruption in his campaign commitments, parliamentarians have rendered the country’s most important legal tool useless.
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