While a spate of financial scams involving important members of the ruling elite has caused general despondency, yet another case of alleged wrongdoing by public officials has surfaced this time linking the Foreign Office's protocol department with the visa scandal.
According to press reports, the FO recently received a letter from a private complainant saying that the protocol department officials had been issuing letters of introduction to some illegal visa agents in return for material gains. This was not bad enough. But the letter also alleged that the visa requests the FO sends relevant embassies for those accompanying the President and the Prime Minister on their tours abroad includes 'two to five extra names of unknown people'. This is done, said the letter, in exchange for small financial benefits. The allegations were serious enough to merit attention. That though was not to be.
Notably, the complainant says the Foreign Office ignored his first letter. So he sent a second letter to the Foreign Ministry, to which a senior official of the protocol division has reacted by categorically denying the allegations. He insisted that this was simply impossible, and hence could not have happened. To say the least, this is an inappropriate response. Of course, everything is possible.
If the protocol department really wants to give the favour in question to anyone it can easily do so by adding the desired names to the official delegation members' list. Apparently, neither the president's nor the prime minister's office keep a critical eye on the visa processing details. In any case, in view of the seriousness of the allegations, the FO could have done service to itself by offering to investigate the issue rather than adopting a defensive posture, and maintaining that no such thing happened because it couldn't.
As the complainant has suggested in his letter, the foreign ministry can obtain the delegation members' lists from the prime minister's and the president's offices and ask the relevant foreign missions for the visa request letters received from the Foreign Office; matching the two lists can help establish the truth.
Faced with a determined whistleblower, the FO announced on Friday the setting up of a three-member committee headed by its Additional Secretary, to look into the matter. If a press report is to be believed, it did so only after the complainant threatened to go to the media and reveal details of a potentially damaging affair. It is now hoped that the inquiry will be carried out in a transparent manner and its findings made public. Failing which, more dirty laundry of a government department is likely to be washed in public.