Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

A few week­ends ago the top­ic of Ba­jan news pro­gramme Time To Face The Facts was cor­rup­tion in the Caribbean.Be­tween them, Afra Ray­mond, Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC), and host Jer­ry George pro­vid­ed many in­sights worth dis­sem­i­nat­ing.In terms of a de­f­i­n­i­tion, cor­rup­tion was de­scribed as the prac­tice of abus­ing a po­si­tion of trust, most of­ten in se­cre­cy. For ex­am­ple, peo­ple in po­si­tions of pow­er who of­fer jobs and con­tracts they shouldn't be award­ing.

From out­right fraud and theft, cor­rup­tion al­so in­cludes, among oth­er things, ill-con­ceived projects and in­ap­pro­pri­ate spend­ing. Nepo­tism too.In­ter­est­ing­ly, when the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty dis­cuss­es nepo­tism as cor­rup­tion they iden­ti­fy blood ties among peo­ple.Re­gion­al­ly, due to the par­tic­u­lar his­to­ries of the Caribbean, many of us grow up in ex­tend­ed fam­i­lies with fic­tive kin (peo­ple we con­sid­er fam­i­ly but to whom we are not re­lat­ed by blood) and nepo­tism here ex­tends well be­yond blood ties.

An­oth­er point raised was that, in a gen­er­al sense, there is the ten­den­cy to see cor­rup­tion as es­sen­tial­ly some­thing found in the pub­lic sec­tor; but it is al­so im­por­tant to recog­nise there is an abun­dance of cor­rup­tion in the pri­vate sec­tor too–CLI­CO a prime ex­am­ple.The me­dia, too, has a role to play in the way cor­rup­tion is un­der­stood.

Due to un­der-re­port­ing and fo­cus on sen­sa­tion­al vi­o­lent crime, the fourth es­tate can at best be said to have a blind spot for cor­rup­tion and at worst we might say there has been a cor­rup­tion of the me­dia.To bet­ter un­der­stand cor­rup­tion, Mr Ray­mond of­fered three myths about it. The first myth was that cor­rup­tion is not re­al­ly a crime, that, for ex­am­ple, nepo­tism isn't cor­rup­tion.

It is just do­ing things for your fam­i­ly. Or when the me­dia, gov­ern­ment, or pub­lic speaks about crime fig­ures, they rarely in­clude cor­rup­tion in those fig­ures. The sec­ond myth was that even if there is some­thing iden­ti­fi­able as cor­rup­tion, it isn't wide­spread; cor­rup­tion is just a small in­con­ve­nience.

As Ray­mond points out else­where, the col­lapsed build­ing in Bangladesh and some ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dents here in T&T both could per­haps be linked to cor­rup­tion–the first in con­struct­ing a struc­ture three floors high­er than build­ing per­mits al­lowed, the sec­ond in the li­cens­ing of­fice al­low­ing dri­vers and cars on the road that are not road wor­thy.The third myth was there is noth­ing you can do about cor­rup­tion. This myth stood out most.

For starters, even those like Mr Ray­mond who are try­ing to bring cor­rup­tion to light ad­mit that mea­sur­ing cor­rup­tion is near­ly im­pos­si­ble.Yes, there is an In­ter­na­tion­al Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex, and in­ves­ti­ga­tions when and if some­thing goes wrong. But the ac­tu­al em­pir­i­cal mea­sure­ment of cor­rup­tion is dif­fi­cult since it is most­ly hid­den.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, Mr Ray­mond point­ed out that Bar­ba­dos, where there are none of the fun­da­men­tal in­tegri­ty in­sti­tu­tions of T&T–such as a sup­pos­ed­ly in­de­pen­dent DPP, the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion–ranks 15 in the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex. T&T comes in at num­ber 80.This, as Mr George point­ed out, sug­gests that key to tack­ling cor­rup­tion is how se­ri­ous­ly gov­ern­ments and the pub­lic take cor­rup­tion.

An­oth­er im­por­tant in­sight was how could peo­ple iden­ti­fy cor­rup­tion? Mr Ray­mond of­fered three mark­ers of cor­rup­tion.

1) An in­ex­pe­ri­enced per­son or in­sti­tu­tion is sud­den­ly pushed in­to a po­si­tion of great au­thor­i­ty.

2) The thing that has to be done–say the build­ing of a high­way–has to be con­struct­ed so quick­ly there isn't time to dis­cuss it, and

3) Every­thing con­nect­ed to the con­tract for the job is done so quick­ly, and with so much in­ex­pe­ri­ence by those in­volved, that the fi­nan­cial fig­ures can­not be ex­posed un­til con­tracts are signed. Hear­ing these, a num­ber of past and cur­rent con­struc­tion jobs in T&T spring to mind.

Over time, cor­rup­tion can pro­vide cer­tain groups in so­ci­ety with con­tin­ued so­cial and eco­nom­ic ad­van­tages over oth­er groups.In this sense, cor­rup­tion is an eco­nom­ic crime. In aca­d­e­m­ic cir­cles eco­nom­ic jus­tice refers to the im­plic­it sense of moral­i­ty that should be con­tained in the prin­ci­ples dri­ving the de­ci­sion-mak­ing of peo­ple and in­sti­tu­tions.

Specif­i­cal­ly, eco­nom­ic jus­tice is the idea that eq­ui­table par­tic­i­pa­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion and har­mo­ny are need­ed in or­der to counter the way cor­rup­tion pro­vides eco­nom­ic ad­van­tages for some over oth­ers.

So what can we do about cor­rup­tion? Sug­ges­tions in­clud­ed ro­bust reg­u­la­tions, civ­il so­ci­ety in­volve­ment in over­sight of the pro­cure­ment process, ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion, an al­ter­na­tive to the racial and eth­nic pol­i­tics that have de­fined our last 50 years, and al­so the sug­ges­tion that we need an an­ti-cor­rup­tion po­lit­i­cal par­ty. In goes with­out say­ing that these are all facts we have to face up to.

�2Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine