Opinion

Plugging the loopholes

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-13 07:58

After a seven-year delay, authorities have begun soliciting opinions over detailed rules on how to implement the Government Procurement Law. It's better late than never, many might say. Indeed, the confusion, suspicion, and corruption resulted from the absence of such rules has been too costly.

But let's be honest - the law cannot be blamed for all that has gone wrong. Viewed independently, the law does not look that bad at all. On the very contrary, it appears sophisticated enough from a jurisprudential perspective.

The framework of the legislation should have served its supposed purpose - to regulate government procurement, improve investment efficiency, and, of course, prevent corruption - perfectly well.

If there is anything wrong with it, it might be the neglect of context. Its drafters obviously failed to fully appreciate the technical difficulty in regulating rule-writers. The otherwise sophisticated law has turned out to be porous and thus toothless in the face of our imaginative officials. It has loopholes that corrupt officials can take advantage of.

Lawmakers usually avoid going into minute details in legislations. A law needs to be more or less above and beyond immediate day-to-day concerns to stand the test of time, and to apply to different situations. But such abstractness leaves blind spots for people to exploit.

Makers of the procurement law might have pinned higher expectations on the good faith of subjects. Government functionaries are indeed supposed to be more conscious of the moral consequences of their personal conduct.

But if that ever was true, it no longer is. Grim reality has taught that these subjects are, at the very best, as vulnerable as anyone else when faced with material temptations. And given their more convenient access to public resources, they are actually more vulnerable than the rest of us.

The proposed rules on implementing the law do get closer to reality. Being more specific about procedure, for instance, can considerably reduce the freedom for public servants' rent-seeking propensities. We believe the current version of the rules can bring us farther in the intended direction. But, judging from what we have seen at this point, it will not be far enough.

Since transparency is a proven antidote for corruption in public offices, we would rather see bolder steps in that direction.