The re­lease of Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al’s lat­est Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex (CPI) in the same week that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions end­ed in a dead­lock meant that na­tion­al at­ten­tion was di­vert­ed away from T&T’s lack of progress in the rank­ings.

No mat­ter how much some pub­lic of­fi­cials might try to put a pos­i­tive spin on the is­sue, the un­avoid­able truth is that plen­ty of work must be done to im­prove T&T’s stand­ing on the CPI.

A rank­ing of 86 out of 180 coun­tries, down one place from the 2019 po­si­tion, is cause for se­ri­ous con­cern. Lest we for­get, it is a source of shame and re­gret that the DC-9 Scan­dal, Gas Sta­tion Rack­et and, more re­cent­ly, Sec­tion 34, all hap­pened here—and those are just a few of the cor­rup­tion scan­dals that have been de­tect­ed.

It means that this coun­try, which has such a long and shame­ful his­to­ry of cor­rup­tion, has not been putting suf­fi­cient ef­fort in­to im­prov­ing the leg­isla­tive land­scape and an­ti-cor­rup­tion sys­tems, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the pub­lic sec­tor.

This coun­try re­mains at a score of 40, well be­hind many oth­er Caribbean na­tions and still a long dis­tance away from where we ought to be at this stage in our de­vel­op­ment.

Some may want to blame T&T’s lack of progress on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, but the truth is the glob­al pub­lic health cri­sis should have pro­vid­ed the im­pe­tus to ramp up an­ti-cor­rup­tion ef­forts.

Among the ma­jor find­ings in the 2020 re­port is that "per­sis­tent cor­rup­tion is un­der­min­ing health care sys­tems and con­tribut­ing to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing amid the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic."

The Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al re­port fur­ther stat­ed: "Coun­tries that per­form well on the in­dex in­vest more in health care, are bet­ter able to pro­vide uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age and are less like­ly to vi­o­late de­mo­c­ra­t­ic norms and in­sti­tu­tions or the rule of law."

Be­yond the lat­est CPI rank­ing, there is the re­al­i­ty that cor­rup­tion can be par­tic­u­lar­ly cor­ro­sive for a coun­try of our size.

A 2016 re­port by the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­ODC) which fo­cused on small is­land de­vel­op­ing states found that it "im­pedes de­vel­op­ment and is di­rect­ly linked to lev­els of in­equal­i­ty in so­ci­ety, un­der­min­ing the rule of law, weak­en­ing in­sti­tu­tions and de­stroy­ing cit­i­zens’ trust in them."

It al­so found that cor­rup­tion is "a main ob­sta­cle to so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment."

So where does T&T stand in terms of the health of its an­ti-cor­rup­tion au­thor­i­ties and over­sight in­sti­tu­tions? Not in a good place.

It is un­ac­cept­able, for ex­am­ple, that more than one po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion has presided over nu­mer­ous stops, starts and un­nec­es­sary stalls in ef­forts to es­tab­lish a pub­lic pro­cure­ment regime. Even now, the sys­tem is not op­er­a­tional.

Apart from still be­ing a few crit­i­cal steps away from full im­ple­men­ta­tion of pub­lic pro­cure­ment laws, T&T suf­fers from oth­er de­fi­cien­cies. For ex­am­ple, the ab­sence of cam­paign fi­nanc­ing laws means that we are still with­out safe­guards from pro­ceeds of cor­rup­tion, mon­ey laun­der­ing in­fest­ing the elec­tion process.

That is why T&T ranks so low on the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex.