Corrupter and corruptee

Once again, next week, Transparency International (TI) will publish its annual index on how the world perceives corruption in the various countries included in the ranking. It is not necessary to mention that our country has never been able to occupy a reasonable placing within this ranking, although there are some expectations that we could achieve advances after putting into law a new Constitution, in year 2000 or 2001. 

But it takes two to tango! This year, by public acclaim, they will also publish an index that represents the other side of the coin. This index will rank the corrupters and will be denominated the Bribe Payer’s Index. I believe this will raise blood pressure levels in many countries that normally celebrate their high ranking in the Corruption Index.

Evidently, no one believes that the world will ever manage to totally eradicate corruption. In a sense, I hope it doesn’t, since this could mean the elimination of something that is an integral part of humanity, something like reducing human bio-diversity. However, I do believe that there are many means out there with which we can minimize the pernicious consequences of corruption and in this respect, no one needs it more than the developing nations.

Among the instruments at hand we must not underestimate the impact of these rankings. The modern world sees in them a comfortable, although probably somewhat simplistic, way of synthesizing today’s overabundance of information.

I believe the new TI index is appropriate and will be useful among other aspects in minimizing the effects caused by looking at only one side of the problem. For instance, until just recently, in one of those countries that normally come out smelling like roses from the corruption ranking, it was standard and legal practice to deduct for income tax purposes bribes and “payments” if and when the same are a “normal customary practice” in the country in which they were actually made. In this respect there was the very disturbing possibility that The Corruption Index itself could possibly promote corruption by evidencing a “normal customary practice” of bribing. Hopefully tax deductibility of bribes should perhaps be more difficult to justify if we have an index that ranks corrupters as well.

About a year ago and as I surfed through TI’s web site, I ran into a commentary made by a reader which literally said something like: ‘As a President of an international company, I find your corruption index of various countries to be a very helpful tool in my everyday business dealings”. In the face of such cynicism I researched a bit more who this person and company were and, lo and behold, they did not really have a relevant position in the global market after all.

By the way and on a quite separate issue, it is incredibly how frequent it is to find web sites put up by some small-time entrepreneur and who, even though his dealings are strictly local (like the proverbial corner barbershop), evidently believes that with it, he has acquired global presence. The same could probably happens to writers of articles, like myself, and in this respect The Web must surely be the napoleonic complex’s best ally.

But coming back to the matter at hand. It is evident that anyone that dares to say that the Corruption Index is a ‘helpful tool in my everyday business dealings’ should be negatively ranked in the Bribe Payer’s Index. Actually, when we analyze civilization, or at least its various religions, we find that in general terms they consider that he who tempts (a role usually assigned to the Devil) is considered to sin more severely than he who succumbs to temptation does. It is surprising that these contradictions have not come to light earlier. We welcome them.

And while we are at it. I would much appreciate it if TI, or any other organization with similar status and credibility, could develop an index that encompasses the matter of compliance with commercial treaties. 

For example, I am sure that if we were to generate an index that reflects compliance with agreements signed on agricultural policy issues, Venezuela would come out towards the top while those countries that today chastise us would be among the least compliant. Indexes like these would be very useful to small countries like Venezuela. They would show them how to navigate in a reasonable way in the very complex world of international commercial treaties.