| By John O’Shea
Published in the Sunday Independent on 5th December
2004
To mark United Nations International Anti-Corruption Day (December
9th) John O’Shea of GOAL looks at the links between poverty
and endemic corruption in the developing world.
It is often said that it is impossible to even get off a plane
in one African capital without paying a bribe. This is said in jest
but it is certainly difficult to get through the airport with your
luggage intact without paying a backhander to someone.
People laugh at it but having been in and around the Third World
for the past 27 years I can attest to the fact that corruption is
part of every day life on the continent of Africa. Those who have
any dealings in Africa cannot but be aware of it but I wonder do
they treat it as the serious problem that it is?
Looking back over those 27 years I can say that unquestionably
the single biggest cause of poverty and the attempts to alleviate
it, is corruption. There are all manner of other difficulties to
overcome such as tortuous bureaucracy, the debt crisis, the AIDS
pandemic, food shortages, famine, the lack of interest of governments
in the well being of their people, or the sheer indifference of
the international community. But the one that has the most serious
and far reaching effect is corruption.
In practically every country where GOAL has worked we have found
that the corrupt practices of governments and their civil servants
have consistently prevented aid from reaching the poor on the scale
that is required.
Oh how I wish there was a public outcry about corruption. The fact
that there has not is probably due to the relative lack of knowledge
that Irish people may have about how deep rooted and serious corruption
in developing countries is. In terms of the numbers of people affected
and the damage that it does, corruption is the crime of the century.
Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
is alleged to have stolen $6 billion from his people during his
30 year rule. He had palaces throughout Europe and strewn throughout
Zaire which was one of the poorest countries in Africa at the time.
Although this was all common knowledge at the time, nobody in authority
did anything about it. In fact he received continuing support from
the West because he was seen as a bulwark against communism.
Frederick Chiluba, who was President of Zambia for ten years until
2001, is now facing 169 charges of corruption involving sums of
money totalling $488 million. This is the mere tip of the iceberg
however – he is thought to have money stashed away in accounts
in the UX, USA and several European countries. Just last week the
Attorney General of Zambia, George Kunda, was granted an order in
the High Court in London to freeze $24 million worth of assets held
by Chiluba in a London bank.
It is reckoned that Mohammed Suharto during his 30 year tenure
as President of Indonesia managed to salt away $35 billion which
was meant for the development of his country and its people. That’s
over a billion a year.
These of course are some of the more spectacular examples and we
tend to hear only about them but in fact the people who have the
worst direct effect on the lives of the poor in these countries
are the civil servants many of whom, because they may not have been
paid for months or in some cases years, resort to taking bribes.
This means that where there is supposed to be free education in
reality there is no education unless parents pay a bribe to the
teacher. The police force is corrupt in most developing countries
and simple everyday transactions such as getting a driving licence
or an identity card or passport, even buying stamps, can involve
the payment of bribes.
Unfortunately this scandal touches Ireland as well and not only
because we have our own share of corruption but also because we
have entered into relationships with several of these corrupt third
world countries by giving them bilateral or government to government
assistance.
For example, throughout his ten year regime in Zambia Chiluba was
receiving money from Ireland. The man who made himself a billionaire
by stealing from his people, who were already amongst the poorest
on earth, but were even poorer by the time he was finished, visited
Dublin about five years ago.
He was wined and dined in the splendour of Dublin Castle but sadly,
not one Irish politician had the courage to mention these matters
before he was handed the cheque for millions of Irish taxpayer’s
hard earned punts. To my knowledge no TD has ever asked the Dail
the obvious question about whether or not it can be ascertained
that Irish aid money was stolen by Chiluba?
Similarly, when Yoweri Museveni, a man accused of involvement in
an illegal war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has
been the cause of 5 million deaths and huge scale plunder of diamonds,
gold and other precious commodities is a regular visitor and again
one wonders why the establishment here is not grilling him on the
appalling human rights and corruption record of his government.
If governments, for whatever reason, lack the moral courage to
ask these difficult questions it is perhaps time for the Irish people
to start asking their political representatives if they are happy
to deal with regimes that are infected with institutionalised and
endemic corruption.
A separate section of the Department of FA should be established
to deal exclusively with the issue of corruption – as the
Wall Street financier and philanthropist George Soros, the man who
famously made a billion dollars in one day speculating on the financial
exchanges once said, dealing with corrupt governments is the worst
possible way to assist the poorest of the poor.
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