. . . Guarding the guards
I WOULD be more afraid of what could be done with the arbitrary powers of the independent Commission Against Corrup- tion. This was set up to cope with police- men who thought that the market economy should apply to them, too — but its powers go beyond the police and even the public service. (Its first target was a doorman who had taken backhanders from taxi drivers.) No habeas corpus with the Commission, which can bust a suspect and leave him waiting without charges for five years, no presumption of innocence, no remedy for false accusations, no right to confront an accuser, anonymous denunciations gratefully received. 'In the right hands', says a friend here, 'it could make the KGB look a bunch of amateurs.' The Commis- sion and its powers were put on the statute book in a hurry, and as so often happens have outlasted the occasion for them. They should be tidied away. Failing that, the government should take the advice of Nicholas Sibley, taipan of Barclays de Zoete Wedd. It was Mr Sibley who pointed out that the public finances would be transformed if the Commission were priva- tised, by tender, to the highest bidder. That might even pay for a new airport.
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