Once the exclusive preserve of banana republics, absolute monarchies and totalitarian regimes — corruption and bribery in public life and business — seems finally coming home to roost in the world’s democracies.
Judging by the spate of current corruption scandals in South Korea, France, Romania, Brazil, South Africa and Peru to name but a few, one can easily get an impression that corruption and bribery in public life and business is reaching epidemic proportions.
This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Transparency International (TI), the Berlin-based global gatekeeper against corruption “to stop the abuse of power, bribery and secret deals” wherever it may occur, in its latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2016, could not be more to the point.
“No country gets close to a perfect score in the CPI 2016. Over two-thirds of the 176 countries and territories in this year’s index fall below the midpoint of our scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). The global average score is a paltry 43, indicating endemic corruption in a country’s public sector,” said TI in a statement.
While I am a great supporter of TI, its annual CPI and the ground-breaking work it is doing in contributing to understanding and eradicating corruption by forcing it on to the global agenda, the index remains a subjective exercise based on surveys of the perceptions of the business fraternity in various countries, where it even draws on information and collaboration with government agencies, non-governmental organisations and its own field offices.
The CPI is a perennial exercise in predictability — the northern European countries and New Zealand are the least corrupt while the eight conflict countries — Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, North Korea, South Sudan and Somalia — are the most corrupt. It used to be Bangladesh and Nigeria but they have made relative progress in rooting out endemic corruption by moving up the index by over 30 rankings over the last few years. So, perhaps, TI may be having a positive effect.
Despite the era of social media, instant global communication and heightened anti-corruption and money-laundering laws and surveillance, why is corruption and bribery in democratic polity on the increase? It may be because of better monitoring, surveillance and reporting.
On the other hand, it could be due to the gradual dumbing down of democracy and its processes over the last few decades, which has resulted in increasingly entrenched deficits that may prove difficult to reverse.
Of the established democracies, France stands out like a sore thumb with three current corruption scandals, which go to the core of the very values of the Sixth Republic. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is to stand trial for election fraud for his presidential re-election campaign in 2012, which he lost to President Francois Hollande.
The man, who only a few weeks ago beat Sarkozy for the nomination of the Republican Party for the May presidential election, Francois Fillon is similarly embroiled in a “fake jobs” scandal for which he has already apologised, yet seemed fit to declare that he “has done nothing wrong”. This, despite the fact that he had claimed over €1 million (RM4.2 million) for parliamentary assistant work by members of his family, which they never did.
Far-right presidential candidate Marie Le Pen of the anti-immigrant National Front is similarly embroiled in fake expenses submitted to the European Parliament and has been ordered to pay back the money or face the consequences.
In Romania, the government of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu has taken corruption to a surreal level — effectively trying to legitimise it by introducing a decree to decriminalise corruption if it involved less than €50,000. Following public protests, the government has partially repealed the decree.
Democracy is faced with two serious challenges — election funds and special interests. In the past, there were curbs depending on how much parties could spend on campaigns. In the United States, the figures can obscenely run into billions of dollars. There used to be clear blue water between politics and special interests, especially business. These lines have become blurred.
How ironic that billionaire President Donald Trump, the supposed champion of working-class America who got left behind, has amassed a cabinet whose main claim to fame is inter alia bigotry, misogyny, incompetence in their cabinet portfolios, and the fact that many of them, too, are billionaires.
There is also a connection between corruption and inequality, which according to TI, feed off each other to create a vicious circle between corruption, unequal distribution of power and wealth in society. This further feeds populism. When traditional politicians fail to tackle corruption, people grow cynical and turn to populist leaders who promise to break the cycle of corruption and privilege.
Yet, this is likely to exacerbate — rather than resolve — the tensions that fed populism in the first place. The moral ambivalence which populism tends to prop up is itself an act of corruption.
Perhaps, it is time to raise the bar and come up with a more relevant definition of democratic polity. Hiding behind Churchill’s alleged remark that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”, is so passé!
Mushtak Parker is an independent
London-based economist and writer