Corruption chaff in the wind

Rather unsurprisingly, last week’s release of the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) has gained very little traction in the public domain.

The report looks substantially at how corrupt public sector practices “undermine efforts to address the climate crisis, disrupt environmental sustainability, and hinder equitable progress toward a more sustainable future.”

In CPI 2024, Trinidad and Tobago scored 41 and was ranked 82nd of the 180 countries. The global average was 43 and our score in 2023 was 42. The higher the score, the “cleaner” the country. 

As far as I have been able to see, both on legacy and social media, there has been no serious engagement of some of the key assertions of this report which attempts to record perceptions by experts and businesspeople about the prevalence of corrupt practices globally, using 13 independent data sets from agencies such as the World Bank.

I think there are several reasons for the apparent indifference. And it’s not that I think there is a lack of general concern. As we witnessed last week, the subject was sensationally and absurdly invoked as part of a claim that the ethnic character of perceived chronic offenders is linked to strategies to gain political advantage.

And this excited so many of us that social media platforms remained lit and alive on the matter even through the Carnival fetes and constituency screening processes.

However, such a vulgar assessment of the corruption reality disregards the complex nature of the challenge and does not encourage engagement of the complex nature of what we confront.

There is nothing in the claim, for instance, that expresses a serious concern that corruption in all its manifestations - from the petty to the administrative to the grand corruption to which newspaper headlines are attracted – brings with it numerous threats to urgent developmental needs.

Little has been inserted in the public space to draw attention to the numerous economic, social, political, and environmental impacts.

Now, the latter (largely ignored) concern about the natural environment brings us back to the 2024 CPI and its concern about the climate crisis.

It is true, among other things, that the immediate lack of attention owes somewhat to the current heavy preoccupation with the ins and outs of the Carnival and election seasons – if you’re able to tell the difference.  

The public agenda is also justifiably, and simultaneously, preoccupied with the fact that the State of Emergency is not achieving the goals as set out in the core justification namely: to address anticipated heightened criminal activity involving high-power weapons and stimulated by “retaliatory acts between gangs.”

Who really wants to hear about the dissecting of systemic corruption and its impact on development at this time?

Additionally, and I think most importantly, the attempt by the Transparency folks to locate an intersection between corruption and the climate crisis comes up against several compelling phenomena.

These include the growing role of political anti-science. This is just a fancy way of saying that many political actors, both here and abroad, aren’t entirely convinced that human conduct plays as significant a role in changing climate conditions as is being proposed by most of the world’s leading scientists.

The climate crisis has thus been thrown by many in a public bin wherein also reside the remnants of the Covid-19 pandemic and actions to address it, lunar landings, universal human rights, and assertions such as the spherical nature of planet Earth.

There is a virtual global manifesto being authored to mobilise public action against scientific thought and action. So, any attempt to nuance the corruption case against the backdrop of challenged climate-related actions, is doomed to elude serious attention in some important quarters.

That said, in what I consider to be a major concession by the CPI authors, there is the assertion that even as some countries have impressive scores on the Index, there are practices related to the “washing” of corrupt money permitted with impunity in such places.

There is the accompanying question of the disproportionate, punitive emphasis on the practices of small economies such as ours when larger, wealthier countries with high CPIs are efficient facilitators of international corruption but are readily permitted to have their way. Marla Dukharan’s campaign for a global review of tax havens eloquently makes the point.

What, by way of political commentary, last week and over the weekend, explored these dimensions of the corruption question? There has been much chaff in the wind and little to indicate seriousness on these matters. We won’t reach too far with that.