Ethics Newsline®

VARIOUS DATELINES
Corruption issues figured in world headlines last week:

• Weekend protests against emergency rule in Pakistan ratcheted up tensions there as ex-premiere Benazir Bhutto protested the emergency crackdown by president Pervez Musharraf. CBS News reports that Bhutto addressed a rally of about 200 journalists protesting recently imposed media restrictions. Bhutto was sacked in 1999 amid widespread allegations of corruption, and recently returned to Pakistan in what appeared to be a power-sharing agreement brokered with Musharraf. Musharraf’s popularity has plummeted in recent months, and his government has been under pressure because some in the judiciary say that his reelection was invalid.
• In Bangladesh, a top aide to the nation’s former prime minister has been arrested and charged with breaking emergency laws and assaulting a dissident. Retired brigadier general ASM Hannan Shah, an advisor to the now-detained prime minister, was arrested late Wednesday during a police raid on his home, according to a report from the Agence France-Presse. Bangladesh is being ruled by a military-backed emergency government after elections were cancelled last January amid charges of poll rigging.
• A coalition of groups from across Nigeria last week called for “zero tolerance” toward corruption in every facet of society, reports the Day of Lagos, Nigeria. The activists, attending an anticorruption forum organized by a group called the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, declared that “corruption is fundamentally an economic and political question which is continuously fertilized by poverty and can only be effectively addressed by a progressive, legitimate, and people-driven government.”
• South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal last week ruled that warrants authorizing the seizure of documents from former deputy president Jacob Zuma were lawfully obtained and could be used against him if a corruption case makes it to court. Prosecutors allege that Zuma received bribes from an arms manufacturer, reports the Jurist, a site from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Zuma has indicated he may run against South African president Thabo Mbeki in the 2009 presidential election.