Corruption is fearful of transparency

One of the strategic initiatives since I took office at the Bureau is to make sure that the Bureau is as close and as transparent as possible to members of the public as they remain the most important stakeholder in our fight against corruption especially in the areas of public sector corruption. They are the whistle-blowers on excesses of public servants especially corruption. We receive a large bulk of our first information or complaint from members of the public. However, I have always felt that the Bureau can make more improvement on how we can reach out to the members of the public. Thus amongst the initiatives that I took was the revamping of our official website www.bmr.gov.bn which amongst the many services provided, the possibility for them to file their complaint or information anonymously online. You can click the tab 'submit information' under 'services' and just follow the instruction. Under this system, the member of the public can also find out the status of his complaint and information that he provided to the Bureau.
I should however inform the public that there is absolutely no legal right for members of the public to force the Bureau to investigate every single complaint or information they filed in. Infact it will be ultra vires and illegal for this Bureau to initiate investigation that it has no legal powers to investigate! The Bureau does occasionally receive information that it has no jurisdiction to investigate for example on family feud over land or spousal dispute on property and sometimes information or complaint that reveal possible offences that the Bureau is not the competent authority to investigate for instance on theft or cheating. In such instance, we would normally advice the complainant to approach a more relevant authority or if the complainant could not be contacted, the Bureau would refer the information to a competent authority in accordance with the existing laws.
Whilst the Bureau will try every attempt permissible under the law to be transparent, there are clear sets of parameters that we cannot go beyond. Members of the public should always be reminded on the following:
1. The Bureau cannot disclose to anyone the identity of any person who is a subject of investigation of this Bureau or the details of the investigation to any person without lawful authority or reasonable excuse.

2. The Bureau cannot disclose to members of the public our intelligence apparatus and infrastructure as this can seriously jeopardise on how the Bureau can function effectively. 

3. A member of the public cannot force the Bureau to investigate further into an information which the Bureau has deemed to be vague and has not disclosed any offences which the Bureau is competent to investigate unless of course new and more reliable information is provided.

4. It is an offence for members of the public to make a false report or mislead the Director, deputy director or any officer of the Bureau.

I really hope that members of the public to fully utilise our newly revamped website. Over the coming months, we will be providing more content into it.  I certainly welcome any comments and suggestions on how we can improve this website further either through this blog or via email or by simply writing in to our office. One further initiative that we will introduce in the coming weeks is on the use of Facebook to reach out further to members of the public especially the younger adults. I see that Facebook is a very good networking tool to get people connected  especially those who share the same cause and aspirations. It can be an effective tool to champion our anti corruption cause either in communicating our various anti corruption activities as well as in creating the "buzz" that everyone in Brunei must say NO to corruption.

With all these initaitives however at the end of the day, we need to go back to the original mission of this Bureau that is to fight corruption in the country especially in the public sector. The Bureau will always be on the look out and learn for new ways and methods on how we can execute our 3 key strategies of the Bureau in fighting corruption which are through effective law enforcement, educating the members of the public on the evils of corruption and finally through corruption prevention initiatives. Like what I have always reminded officers of the Bureau, the key charasteristic that all officers of the Bureau must possess is the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn.

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