Tackling corruption
29th October 2010 by Andrew Matheson, Manila | 2 Comments
Once again analysis by the NGO Transparency International has shown that New Zealand is considered the least corrupt country in the world.
What Transparency International does is carry out a “survey of surveys”, drawing on data assembled by international organisations and NGOs. From these sources it calculates an index of how people perceive corruption in the public sector. On a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (highly clean), New Zealand scored 9.3.
The 2010 report, which was released this week, shows that New Zealand still has the highest rating (which we share this year with Denmark and Singapore). This is something we can be proud of, though two things come to mind.
No country, including New Zealand, gets a high score by accident. There needs to be a strong set of laws and policies to ensure full transparency and accountability. But that’s not enough. Above all a country has to have a spirit of honesty and openness, and a widespread expectation that people will carry out their jobs with a high standard of integrity. The primary objective of New Zealand’s state sector legislation for half a century has been for officials to be imbued with a “spirit of service to the community”. The central agency of the state sector continues to work hard on integrity issues.
The other point to bear in mind is that it will take constant vigilance and continuous refining of our transparency and accountability systems to stay in first place. New Zealand can’t afford to be complacent about this.
President Aquino campaigned on the issue of corruption. I heard him repeat his commitment at the inauguration: “During the campaign we said, ‘If no one is corrupt, no one will be poor’. That is no mere slogan for posters — it is the defining principle that will serve as the foundation of our administration”.
Sadly the Philippines has a long and difficult road ahead. Its score in the 2010 Transparency International index was 2.4, the same as last year, and it ranks 134th out of the 178 countries measured. The ranking is hardly a reflection on the president’s commitment, though, as it was based on 13 surveys published between January 2009 and September 2010.
The new administration has a big job to improve practices and attitudes in the public sector. New legislation may also be needed. This is a huge task, and concerned Filipinos, overseas investors, and other governments (especially donors) will be monitoring progress with real interest.
There are beacons of hope, though, and I’ll write about one in a future post.
Thanks for the insights. With respect to the link between corruption and poverty, in my research I have been unable to avoid the further link between poverty and sustainability. That is, people for whom hunger is the driving issue are not likely to be concerned about climate change.
Some further comments based on an area I am by no means an expert in, but am starting to gain some insight: It is fine to hold up New Zealand as an “un-corrupt” society, but that lack of corruption stems from what could be considered an immature culture that is predominantly secular, but with underlying Christian values. These values are based on a right/wrong frame of reference. Corruption may be more prevalent in societies that have deeply imbedded values based around a shame/honour frame of reference. In New Zealand, shame/honour value systems are more strongly represented in the Asian and Polynesian cultures, and corruption occurs when the laws governing our right/wrong reference system clash (or are constructively manipulated) with the deeper shame/honour system. A further comment is that corruption is reasonably well managed in societies (e.g. Muslim, Jewish) where the legal systems are synergistic with the principles governing shame and honour.
What is required to address poverty in a shame/honour culture may not be better laws, but the fostering of a sense of shame with respect to social inequity.
Greg
I appreciate your thoughtful comments. The link between corruption and the basis for values is very important, for example many commentators in the Philippines point to the importance of ‘utang na loob’. The phrase is loosely translated as a debt of gratitude but actually refers to a strong and long-lasting internal sense of obligation that may put loyalty to a current or former benefactor over ‘rules’ about what is right or wrong in terms of what is best for society as a whole.