What happens in communist Vietnam will not happen in democratic Sri Lanka

Last week a prominent property tycoon in Vietnam was sentenced to death for her role in the country’s biggest-ever fraud case. Truong My Lan, the chair of the developer Van Thinh Phat, was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules. A total of $ 12.5 billion was embezzled, the equivalent of almost 3% of Vietnamese gross domestic product, but prosecutors said that the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to $ 27 billion.

Lan was tried alongside 85 others, including former central bankers and government officials. The trial is part of a national corruption crackdown led by the secretary general of the communist party of Vietnam. This has led to the indictment of thousands of people, as well as the resignation of two presidents and two deputy prime ministers.

State media reported last week that Lan told the court she had joined the banking industry without sufficient experience and blamed a “lack of understanding of legal matters”. The verdict against Lan followed a five-week trial that has been covered in great detail in Vietnam’s tightly controlled state media.

Vietnam is a one-party communist State far from being called ‘democratic’. Its people do not have the free franchise to remove their leaders as in a multi-party system nor are the checks and balances in place, especially through the judiciary supposedly as strong as those in what may be expected in a democracy. Yet, as the recent verdict and the campaign to fight corruption demonstrates, even in the absence of democratic and independent institutions, where there is a political will such significant actions can be undertaken.

In contrast, Sri Lanka is Asia’s oldest continuous democracy. It is supposed to have been bestowed with democratic institutions including an independent judiciary which goes back 200 years. Despite such institutions being in place it is no secret that Sri Lanka is unable to handle corruption at the highest levels. The reasons for this state of affairs are two-fold.

Firstly, despite the nominal independence and separation of powers, Sri Lanka’s democratic institutions are hardly independent. The Attorney General who is supposedly the prosecutor of the State functions as the prosecutor for the Government. As political winds and Governments change, we have seen on numerous occasions the Attorney General’s department and the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption (CIABOC) have withdrawn cases filed against politicians and those politically connected. Even worse is the lack of independence and integrity of the judiciary which had allowed such perversions of justice to happen without any pushback. 

Secondly, and more significantly, Sri Lankan political leadership has very little political will to address corruption since it benefits many in power. The system itself is designed to sustain corruption. From a simple grassroots level politician to the highest in the land, they are indebted to those who fund their campaigns. The political client system has given a monetised and tangible value to the transactional relationships between the governed and those in governance. The Yahapalana government that came into power with an explicit mandate to handle corruption and deliver on good governance faltered for this very lack of political will to address these issues. Those who were in power were very much in cahoots with those who were being investigated and prosecuted by the State. In a now infamous case, the investigations carried by the special police units into the corrupt MIG deal by the former defence secretary was ‘leaked’ by the individual in charge of law and order to the private lawyer of the accused. Today both these individuals are in prominent places within the administration while the police officers who carried out the investigations and prosecutors who prosecuted this case have been hounded and persecuted.

It is for this reason that while communist Vietnam is making strides in holding its leaders and citizens accountable for corruption, in Asia’s oldest democracy there is little chance for such remedy.