One in four persons worldwide paid a bribe in last 12 months - survey says

One in four persons worldwide paid a bribe in last 12 months – survey says

Jul 10, 2013 News

– political parties seen as most corrupt institutions
– watchdog body urges declaration of assets

Transparency International (TI), a global organization devoted to fighting and eradicating corruption, has released its 2013 Global Corruption Barometer (GCB), and it is not heartening with indications that one in four persons paid a bribe in the last 12 months, when accessing public services and public institutions..
According to a release from Transparency Institute Guyana (TIG), the local arm of TI, the related survey involved 114,000 persons in 107 countries
“These results did not reflect any improvement over the years since the barometer was first launched in 2003,” TI said.
The encouraging news is that nine out of ten persons surveyed indicated that they are prepared to act against corruption, while two out of every three persons who were asked to pay a bribe refused to do so. However, governments, civil society and the private sector need to do more to assist in the eradication of corruption.
In particular, many respondents believe that governments are not doing a good job in fighting corruption and that institutions that are relied upon to fight corruption cannot be trusted. Topping the list are the Police and the Judiciary.
In 51 countries, political parties are seen as the most corrupt institutions while 55 per cent of respondents indicated that governments are run by special interests.
Transparency International’s release suggested that politicians can lead by example by publishing asset declarations for themselves and their immediate families while political parties and individual candidates need to disclose the amounts and sources of funding for their activities so as to, among other things, avoid potential conflicts of interest.

Transparent Government
The key recommendations of Transparency International include the need for Governments to be more transparent by opening up their books and activities to public scrutiny and by ensuring that accountability mechanisms and channels are in place to get the public engaged in oversight.
There will also be the need for the promulgation of legislation to provide citizens with freedom of access to information on government programmes and activities; ensuring codes of conduct are in place for all public officials and standards of public procurement and public financial management are consistent with, among others, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
According to TI, prioritising anti-corruption reforms in the police and ensuring the independence of the judiciary and providing checks and balances to ensure that private interests and power groups do not dictate governments’ policies and actions will become key.
“Citizens should be encouraged to refuse to pay a bribe whenever asked and should use existing reporting mechanisms to speak out about corruption that they witness or experience; ending impunity by effectively preventing, detecting, investigating, prosecuting and punishing acts of corruption, and citizens should use their voice, vote and spending to punish the corrupt, such as only voting for clean candidates and parties that stand in elections, and only buying from companies that have strong integrity systems and clean business practices.”

Donations
TIG, meanwhile, said that passing and implementing laws on making political party financing transparent, including requirements for political parties, political candidates and their donors to publicly disclose donations along with whistleblower laws, will also help.
TIG noted that while Guyana was not among the countries surveyed, the suggestions made will resonate powerfully to local conditions and “have been advocated repeatedly by a wide cross section of civil society organizations, opposition activists, and private individuals. Unfortunately not every country could be included in the sample due to funding restrictions.”
According to the watchdog group, “every dollar we spend to grease someone’s palm is a dollar diverted for the enrichment of an undeserving few and our own impoverishment not to mention the reinforcement of a bad habit.
Let us as Guyanese citizens join the nine out of ten in the rest of the world and not wait until we have a situation as in Zimbabwe, where women giving birth have been charged US$5 every time they scream as a penalty for “raising a false alarm”.”
Among the countries surveyed were the US, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Jamaica, Colombia and Canada.

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One in four persons worldwide paid a bribe in last 12 months – survey says

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