A prime minister staged a public hiring lottery to signal anti-corruption transparency

Evidence

Fighting corruption was much tougher than taking vehicles off the streets, but the government faced the challenge with a new zeal. Four instances show the approach adopted. In the early days of his administration, Hussen took the matter personally and symbolically by conducting a lottery for hiring cleaners of public buildings in Mogadishu. The lottery was announced, and the crowd that gathered consisted of curious onlookers as well as applicants. Hussen stood on a makeshift platform and began randomly picking names from the container. To many it seemed surreal that the prime minister of the country was doing such a seemingly trivial task, while others appreciated his intent. Doing this in a central location in Mogadishu told the population that fairness and transparency was what the government was all about and that citizens should not expect less. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 825

Categorization

• CANDY: A prime minister personally drawing cleaning-job names from a lottery box in a public square is a vivid, tweetable scene of showpiece governance.