AU saluted for targeting PAP

In a Daily Maverick analysis, Carien du Plessis notes that the AU seems to be taking its theme of fighting corruption seriously by suspending Pan-African Parliament (PAP) president Roger Nkodo Dang pending a graft investigation. And it is investigating irregularities within its Advisory Board on Corruption. Du Plessis said It seemed an almost empty exercise to watch the heads of some ‘fabulously corrupt’ countries renounce graft during a debate on the matter at the 31st AU summit in Nouakchott, Mauritania a week ago. ‘Still, the AU’s 2018 theme “fighting corruption”, perhaps in conjunction with the no-nonsense spirit in which reforms to the continental body are being done, seems to have inspired some harsher than usual words by the continental body for the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) President Roger Nkodo Dang of Cameroon. The committee of 15 finance ministers from member states in its report asked the AU Commission “to initiate an urgent audit of PAP and put on hold release of the 2019 budget of PAP until completion of the audit exercise”, according to documents submitted during the AU summit. Dang, who was re-elected to the position in May, was reported by the Sunday Times to have been involved in some irregularities. He rejected a ministerial home under renovation offered to him by the South African government, which is hosting PAP in Midrand from its budgets, staying at the upmarket Michelangelo Hotel in Sandton instead for much of 2015 and 2016, and preferred an official Mercedes Benz ML sport utility vehicle rather than a lowly E-Class from the Department of International Relations and Co-operation.’ Du Plessis points out that Africans already have questions over PAP’s purpose, since it has no real teeth to do oversight or enforce legislation.