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.
