World Bank Press: Unending Graft Is Threatening Latin America

Filipinos think that their country is headed for perdition due to excessive politics rooted on Corruption, well the article below by the World Bank press reveals that WE ARE NOT ALONE! Developments in Latin America shows of exactly similar defects, and most importantly many countries have emerged from dictatorship/authoritarian governments to fledging democracies, only to find no substantial improvements…yet ironically a lot of the folks at home have been silently clamoring for a return to authoritarian forms of government, we never learn…

World Bank Press: Unending Graft Is Threatening Latin America

As he campaigned for the presidency in 2002, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva boldly pledged to clean up the sordid politics of Brazil, writes The New York Times (07/30). But now, in a gloomy echo of what has happened time and again across Latin America, da Silva's government is mired in the biggest, most audacious corruption scandal in his country's history.

Brazil's scandal is just the latest reminder of the unremitting corruption that has marked Latin American politics since colonial times, when absolute rulers regarded newly conquered realms in the New World as their personal property. The important difference today is that popularly elected governments now hold sway, and corruption has emerged as one of the gravest threats to the hard-won democratic gains of the last 20 years. Across the region, these second-generation democrats have proved a disappointment, and their ineffectiveness and low standing have allowed political instability and economic disparity to grow. Opinion polls routinely cite corruption as a top cause for a dangerous disillusionment sweeping the region. The disaffection has led to violent popular outbursts, including the lynching of public officials in Peru, and has helped force out eight heads of state in five years.

Some point to the flourishing of cases as evidence that judicial systems and governments are finally taking bad leaders to task. But many analysts and citizens regard the persistence of patronage, nepotism and bribery as a telling measure of the low quality of the region's democracies and of how little elite attitudes have changed since the time when colonial overlords ruled for the purposes of extraction and enrichment with little regard for the people beneath them. International groups like the World Bank say official graft and nepotism are so powerful that they are rotting government institutions and stunting economic growth. In recent Congressional testimony in Washington, American officials estimated that official corruption might shave as much as 15 percent off annual growth in Latin America, as public funds are pilfered and wary foreign investors shy away.

Latin Americans regard corruption as their most serious problem after the region's economic crisis, according to a survey of 18 countries taken in 2004 by Latinobarometro, a Chilean public opinion firm that regularly conducts surveys around the continent. Eighty percent of respondents have also consistently said that they perceive that corruption has increased, while other surveys show that in some Latin American countries, like Argentina, people believe that corruption has a significant effect on the ways business and politics are carried out. ''The impact of corruption on our economies is huge, just huge,'' said Jose Ugaz, a Peruvian who investigates corruption for the World Bank. ''Then there are other effects that cannot be easily measured -- people not having confidence in their governments, thinking officials are stealing money.'' ''When the people lose confidence in the people governing the country,'' he added, ''immediately the loss of confidence generates a lot of problems, and one of them is unrest.''

Frustration has reached dangerous levels in several countries, with sometimes violent street protests. The shift from authoritarian governments to democracies, many had hoped, would squelch the kind of corruption that predominated when dictators ran the affairs of state. Yet successor governments across the political spectrum have proved even more susceptible. With once-closed economies having been opened up and corporate profits at record levels, the opportunities for graft and bribes are larger than ever. Despite improved economic indicators, the ranks of the poor have continued to swell, as has the resentment of those who are pocketing the wealth of the nation for their own benefit.

While some states have markedly improved, notably Chile and Uruguay, they are the exceptions, and the envy of their neighbors, write the New York Times. Venezuela, Paraguay and Bolivia have all had increases in corruption or have shown practically no improvement in fighting it, an annual survey by the corruption watchdog Transparency International shows.

Corruption shows itself in many ways, but perhaps its most glaring and grating form is nepotism and patronage, the flaunting of political connections that so alienates ordinary people. Those practices also take many forms, from outright bribes to jobs and contracts awarded to unqualified or inexperienced people who happen to be related to those in power. Perhaps most ominous for the region's democratic health is that recent scandals involve corruption not simply for personal enrichment, but also to obtain and hold onto power indefinitely, threatening democratic institutions themselves. Yet the leaders involved have denied wrongdoing and have been loath to accept any responsibility, the US daily argues.