We throw the word corruption around like sand on a beach. This renders it irrelevant and does not contribute much to any discussion as far as I can see. Attempts to have serious discourse quickly deteriorate as the mud slinging escalates, both sides losing ground and eventually having accomplished nothing except perhaps, even more dislike for each other. So, I looked around and came up with something that may prove more useful. I found a list on Wikipedia that clearly outlines favourable conditions which PROMOTE corruption. I thought that instead of doing the “PUP is worse than UDP but UDP promised to be different” thing again, we could actually use an objective standard by which to gauge the situation. It is a lot to think about and absorb all at once, perhaps even more so, as we are more than hungover on a Saturday morning 🙂 but I found it very useful in putting our situation into perspective. I hope that as we read through the list, we can identify these issues and in a very non-partisan way, acknowledge that which is blocking our bid for success as a nation.
It is argued that the following conditions are favorable for corruption:
- Information deficits
- Lacking freedom of information legislation. For example: The Indian Right to Information Act 2005 is perceived to have “already engendered mass movements in the country that is bringing the lethargic, often corrupt bureaucracy to its knees and changing power equations completely.”[12]
- Lack of investigative reporting in the local media.
- Contempt for or negligence of exercising freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
- Weak accounting practices, including lack of timely financial management.
- Lack of measurement of corruption. For example, using regular surveys of households and businesses in order to quantify the degree of perception of corruption in different parts of a nation or in different government institutions may increase awareness of corruption and create pressure to combat it. This will also enable an evaluation of the officials who are fighting corruption and the methods used.
- Tax havens which tax their own citizens and companies but not those from other nations and refuse to disclose information necessary for foreign taxation. This enables large scale political corruption in the foreign nations.[13][citation needed]
- Lacking control of the government.
- Lacking civic society and non-governmental organizations which monitor the government.
- An individual voter may have a rational ignorance regarding politics, especially in nationwide elections, since each vote has little weight.
- Weak civil service, and slow pace of reform.
- Weak rule of law.
- Weak legal profession.
- Weak judicial independence.
- Lacking protection of whistleblowers.
- Lack of benchmarking, that is continual detailed evaluation of procedures and comparison to others who do similar things, in the same government or others, in particular comparison to those who do the best work. The Peruvian organization Ciudadanos al Dia has started to measure and compare transparency, costs, and efficiency in different government departments in Peru. It annually awards the best practices which has received widespread media attention. This has created competition among government agencies in order to improve.[14]
- Opportunities and incentives
- Individual officials routinely handle cash, instead of handling payments by giro or on a separate cash desk—illegitimate withdrawals from supervised bank accounts are much more difficult to conceal.
- Public funds are centralized rather than distributed. For example, if $1,000 is embezzled from a local agency that has $2,000 funds, it is easier to notice than from a national agency with $2,000,000 funds. See the principle of subsidiarity.
- Large, unsupervised public investments.
- Sale of state-owned property and privatization.[citation needed]
- Poorly-paid government officials.
- Government licenses needed to conduct business, e.g., import licenses, encourage bribing and kickbacks.
- Long-time work in the same position may create relationships inside and outside the government which encourage and help conceal corruption and favoritism. Rotating government officials to different positions and geographic areas may help prevent this; for instance certain high rank officials in French government services (e.g. treasurer-paymasters general) must rotate every few years.
- Costly political campaigns, with expenses exceeding normal sources of political funding, especially when funded with taxpayer money.
- Less interaction with officials reduces the opportunities for corruption. For example, using the Internet for sending in required information, like applications and tax forms, and then processing this with automated computer systems. This may also speed up the processing and reduce unintentional human errors. See e-Government.
- A windfall from exporting abundant natural resources may encourage corruption.[15] (See Resource curse)
- War and other forms of conflict correlate with a breakdown of public security.
- Social conditions
- Self-interested closed cliques and “Good ol’ boy networks“.
- Family-, and clan-centered social structure, with a tradition of nepotism/favouritism being acceptable.
- A gift economy, such as the Soviet blat system, emerges in a Communist centrally planned economy.
- Lacking literacy and education among the population.
- Frequent discrimination and bullying among the population.
- Tribal solidarity, giving benefits to certain ethnic groups
In the Indian political system, for example, it has become usual that the leadership of national and regional parties are passed from generation to generation[16][17] creating a system in which a family holds the center of power. Some examples are most of the Dravidian parties of south India and also the Congress party, which is one of the two major political parties in India.
It is alarming just how many of these conditions exist in Belize. For the whole article, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption
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