Effective Corporate Governance, you said !

They have updated the Code of Corporate Governance ; they have launched a ‘scorecard’ system for public and private organisations to self-evaluate and assess their peers on the best corporate governance practices.

Is it not just a smokescreen to con us in believing that this ‘scorecard’ will help companies better “operationalize” (sic) the ‘code’ and that it is part of an evolving process aimed at improving corporate governance practices ?

While the reality is that that after so many years of application of the Code , we are still on a voluntary, self-evaluation basis, still stuck with the "apply-and-explain" methodology.

Over the years , our companies have picked and chosen the elements of the code that were easily implementable for them and what were perceived to be more beneficial, or simply implementing the ones that made them look good. They have totally ignored the more demanding ones, the more effective ones - the ones that require strong boards composed of qualified , competent and independent members exercising objective and independent judgement to guide strategy development and monitor management- not forgetting, the question of the operating processes and accountability of boards of directors, better representation of stakeholder interests and that of minority shareholders and improvements in reporting, transparency and disclosure of financial and operational performance data

Have a look at some of our top SOEs/Depertments; they are in a hopeless state of disarray-CWA, STC, Mauritius Telecom, CEB, Air Mauritius, BoM, Statistics Mauritius,SBM…most of their board members have shirked their responsibilities or worse, used their powers to corrupt the SOEs which they have been appointed to build up and perform. This collective misconduct was often evidenced by the abuse of centralised procurement processes so that the approval authority for high value tenders became concentrated in the hands of a small group of top executives and board members.

(On most of the boards of these state bodies we have representatives of the Ministry of Finance who have turned out to to be lame ducks and “yes-man” failing in providing the critical expertise, advice and scrutiny. Our yes-men have to be perceived to be overly agreeable and always hesitant to share contrary viewpoints because it’s rewarding for them. They are just responding to the culture of our civil service where they elicit and reward this type of behavior. After all, they have to survive in that dysfunctional leadership landscape of our public service where all the signals and messages confirm for them that dissent is bad while “toeing the line” is rewarding.)

Take the latest case of CEB relating to Corexsolar, one top mainstream politician is right in pointing out that “la préparation des documents en vue de l’exercice d’appel d’offres a été mal faite” because the call for tenders should not have stipulated as one of its conditions that the bidders provide proof that they were already in possession of the title deeds to the land where the photovoltaic panels were to be installed.

Why, because as he argues « Qui dispose des terres lorsqu’il faut soumettre un projet ? Ce sont les membres des propriétés sucrières qui disposent déjà de leur IPP. Or, dans le contrat qui a été alloué par le CEB en vue de la création d’une ferme solaire, il y a malin et malin et demi »

And OF COURSE , Corexsolar would end up facing a major problem concerning the 300-acre plot of land belonging to the Terra group. Who would have expected less from our corporates?

Why don’t the board directors take responsibility for their “fané” ? Accountability !!!! That’s what effective good governance is all about !

BZTD !!!!