Accountability & Transparency
Dec 18th, 2006 by Tian
Anwar & Simon Zadek gave talk at the dinner
It has been a busy Sunday (Dec 17) for Anwar, though it was not something unusual. He just got back from Washington two days earlier, he was already in his full swing! Parti Keadilan Rakyat and the Federick Normann Stiftung (FNS) organized a full-day Intra Muslim Dialogue in Hilton Petaling Jaya. The discussion among Muslim is an important and timely initiative. The challenge for muslim groups in this country is enormous. Anwar could take a lead in bringing different groups together, at least to talk and gradually developing a more progressive consensus.
In the evening Anwar hosted a dinner with Simon Zadek, the CEO of AccountAbility (AA). Anwar was elected as the Chairperson of AccountAbility on 30 March this year. Simon is doing a short visit to Malaysia. Anwar was probably too busy to organize a separate program for him. A dinner even was quickly put together, and we invited some 30 representatives of NGOs to join.
We are lucky to have Tan Sri Navaratnam, the President of Transparency International Malaysia (TI), Syed Shahir MTUC President, Prof. Rajah Rasiah, and other to come. Inevitably people wanted to know what are differences between TI and AA, and more conceptually, between accountability and transparency.
At the end of the talk by Simon, the role and function of AA was much well understood, well, at by me. Being transparent may not necessarily mean it is ethically, though it is most likely legal. Accountability demands responsibility of, minimally, delivering the right goods to the deserved. Anyway, I am we can go on debating the two concepts endlessly.
During the Q&A, Nava proposed to Anwar to lead a coalition of NGOs, including AA, TI, local activists and NGOs, against abuses of power and corruption. More specifically he suggested at each parliament constituency, a few individuals will act as watchdog, and write report card on the performances of local council, legislators and government officials. I fully agree, it is a brilliant idea. Now we need to get organize.
Simon mentioned e-Bay as an innovative venture to create accountability. Internet is certainly a powerful tool to promote accountability and transparency. I thought of Wikipedia. I wonder we could create a Wikipedia style web program to monitor corruption.
Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam (L), Simon Zadek (C)