14
15
THE MISUSE OF POWERS BY POLITICAL
AND NATIONAL LEADERS EXERCISES
THE MINDS OF SOME OF THE WORLD’S
GREATEST AUTHORITIES AND LEADS
TO IRRESISTIBLY SALACIOUS HEADLINES
FOR JOURNALISTS.
Leadership
and
corruption:
is moral authority going East?
original original
The ‘underdeveloped countries’
have anecdotally been the
corruption centres of the world.
Dr Chris Williams, from the
Centre for International
Education Research, University
of Birmingham, proposes that
recent research may soon turn
accepted thinking upside down.
The East may soon take the
moral high ground.
The ‘developing’ countries
It has been a long held belief in the
Western world that political corruption
begins at the very highest echelons
of government. The Italians even joke
that ‘a fish always rots from the head
downwards’. So, in the late 1980s,
there were no surprises when the rich
nations decided they would no longer
tolerate wayward despots wasting
international aid. In 1989, the World Bank
concluded that ‘leaders must become
more accountable to their peoples.
Transactions must become more
transparent, and funds must be seen
to be properly administered.’
The result was a slow but public response
to the challenge that had been laid down.
In South Korea, Lee Man-Sub, former
speaker of the South Korean Congress
commented ‘if our leaders want to lift
Korea to be a fully developed country,
there must be no corruption or bribery.
In the future, this will be the most
crucial thing.’ Yun-joo Lee, a doctoral
researcher found that Koreans put
‘corruption’ first and ‘leadership skills’
second above the normal concern,
‘economic development’.
By the end of 2000, the Chinese
Discipline Inspection Commission
had dealt with over 136,000
communist officials, 43,000 cases
were brought to court, many ending
with death sentences. A government
anti-corruption film became compulsory
viewing for all officials – Choice
between Life and Death.
16
PERHAPS IDEAS OF ‘DEVELOPED’ AND
‘DEVELOPING’ WILL REFLECT LEADERSHIP
INTEGRITY MORE THAN GDP
The ‘developed’ nations
The Western world was also coming
under scrutiny. The resignation of 20
members of the European Commission,
in 1999, inspired greater integrity within
Europe. In 2001, Le Monde diplomatique
published an article called ‘Presidents
under pressure’. Roland Dumas, the
former French Foreign Minister, was given
a prison sentence for misappropriating
funds from Elf-Aquitaine. In true French
style, he implicated his former mistress
who had published her perspectives
in a book, The Whore of the Republic.
In Italy, senator Antionio Di Pietro set up
‘Operation Clean Hands’, and generated
2,565 accusations of corruption against
politicians and business administrators.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was found
‘responsible’ for paying a $430,000 bribe
Dr Chris Williams
to a judge. His close colleague, Marcello
Dell’Utri, went to jail for colluding with the
mafia. Helmut Kohl only avoided becoming
the highest-ranking German politician to
be tried for corruption since World War II,
by paying a DM300,000 fine for receipt
of illegal party donations.
In 2004 the trial of senior staff at the
Bank of England, for misleading the British
government about the collapse of BCCI,
was the first such case of ‘misfeasance
in public office’ in Britain. In 2002, the US
Congress expelled James Traficant who
was convicted of bribery and racketeering,
only the second expulsion since the Civil
War. This paralleled major court cases
original
about corporate corruption, involving
companies such as Enron, Worldcom
and Anderson. In the wake of the current
economic crisis, cases such as Lehman
and Maidoff are probably just the start
of a second wave.
A global boomerang
The OECD 1999 Bribery Convention
built a consensus among rich and poor
countries. By 2003, the UN Convention
against Corruption was in place.
A chief-executive from the Lesotho
Development Authority was convicted
for taking bribes from multi-national
companies, and a Canadian company
was found guilty of paying a $260,000
bribe. The significance was expressed
by investigator Guido Penzhorn, in The
Economist: ‘It is very important that the
briber was convicted. People here
are very aggrieved when the rich world
writes [political corruption] off as just
an African problem.’
‘Developed’ nation strategies to bring
errant leaders to account in ‘developing’
countries had boomeranged. Hugh
O’Shaughnessy explained the paradoxical
progress of the UN Convention in 2004
– ‘developing countries showed more
enthusiasm for its ratification than EU
countries and the US, none of which
have so far ratified it.’
Is moral authority going East?
Economic superiority is shifting from
West to East, but is moral authority
original
following? A World Economic Forum
survey of leadership trust, in 2003, found
that leaders of the USA came bottom,
and a report from the US International
Institute for Strategic Studies concluded
that the US can no longer ‘assume
a high moral position’ in the world.
Transparency International’s (TI)
2002 Bribe Payers Index identified
governments associated with unfair
practice to gain advantage in
international trade and investment.
Compared with the East Asian countries,
the US came last and this was before
Enron and Lehman. On TI’s Corruption
Perception Index, the USA ranks above
East Asia but a trend analysis shows
that between 2000 and 2008 the
average Asian ‘tiger’ country score
improved whilst the USA trend fell.
By 2008, TI’s report noted that Turkey
and South Korea had made significant
progress. The UK had dropped from
12th to 16th position, questioning
the UK’s ‘engrained complacency
over its failure to take international
corruption seriously. Is it really so difficult
to pass a proper anti-corruption law
in 11 years since one was required
and recommended?’
What will be the effect on the UK ranking
of events in May 2009? Two British
peers were suspended from the Lords
for an alleged willingness to take bribes
to influence law-making. The last time
17
A FISH ALWAYS ROTS FROM
THE HEAD DOWNWARDS
60%
Bribe Payers Index 2002 (BPI)
50%
40%
30%
20%
South Korea
Hong Kong
Taiwan
Malaysia
Singapore
USA
Japan
China
10%
UK
0%
Countires using unfair means to gain or retain business
the Lords took such action was in 1642. Perhaps, in the wake of the present
In parallel, numerous MPs have been economic crisis, ideas of ‘developed’
accused of cheating with their expenses and ‘developing’ will start to reflect
claims, many resigned, and the Commons leadership integrity more than GDP.
Speaker was forced to leave office, Will we soon hear East Asian countries
which has not happened since 1695. complaining about ‘corrupt’ nations
of the West? The guiding ethic was
In 1770, in a prescient speech to the established long ago in a traditional
House of Lords, British Prime Minister, Korean saying: ‘If upstream is clean,
William Pitt, said, ‘Unlimited power is downstream will be clean.’ If we are
apt to corrupt the minds of those who not careful, the West might become
possess it.’ A century later Lord Acton the rotting fish swimming against the
elaborated, ‘Power tends to corrupt, Easterly current.
and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Great men are almost always bad men.’