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Monday April 18, 2005 |
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THE "VIRUS" OF
CORRUPTION
Former judge: "Politicians,
in order to be elected, need a lot of money"
by Angelo Persichilli
(Versione italiana)
THE HILL TIMES
Corruption: dishonest exploitation
of power for personal gain. This is the traditional explanation found in
every dictionary under the dreaded ‘c’ word. In less noble terms, corruption
means stealing public money and putting it in your own pocket.
This was true up
until 20 to 25 years ago.
But now things
have changed. Somebody can be corrupt without putting a cent in your bank
account. The reason is related to the cost of running an election campaign.
This is a phenomenon that goes well beyond Canada.
Europe had to deal
with this in the last decade. Canada is dealing with it now.
In an interview
with The Hill Times two years ago, Antonio Di Pietro, the Italian judge who
busted, at least for a few years, the corruption ring in Italy, said that
the problem is not Canada, Italy, or, any other country. If there is a
western country still not dealing with corruption it’s only because they do
not dig deep enough to expose it.
For the former
judge, who is now a member of the European Union Parliament, corruption is a
virus and a part of the model of the state we have chosen.
Until 25 to 30
years ago, the cost of an election campaign was very limited: there’d be a
few coffee parties, cheap cookies for a handful of fans who wore colourful
hats and a few noisy trumpets.
Then all hell
broke loose and costs went sky-high for a single candidate and for the
central political organization. Elections became costly. All of a sudden,
glossy pamphlets full of colourful pictures of the candidate, the family and
the dog appeared, followed by expensive TV and radio commercials and
newspaper ads. Leaders began crisscrossing the country with plane loads full
of hordes of media, including reporters, photographers, camerapeople and
producers. Then special offices popped up for researches, war rooms, spin
doctors, campaign doctors and pollsters.
And, of course,
some organizers became creative in terms of spending money. Today we have a
black hole where political organizations dump millions of dollars into.
Where is that
money coming from? Contrary to the past when people were resorting to this
activity only to pocket the money, now political organizations are very
expensive to run, said Di Pietro. And it goes on: “Politicians, in order to
be elected, need a lot of money. And, once elected, they are the same
politicians who will dispense contracts.” On the other side of the equation,
Di Pietro puts the business community, especially the one that needs
contracts from governments to be alive.
It is in this
framework that we find what Di Pietro calls the virus of corruption.
He said it is not
fair to classify countries according to the degree of corruption.
The virus is
everywhere. Instead we have to talk about countries that are more or less
willing to cope with the problem.
The worst part of
all of, if there is the worst, is the mechanism to collect the money.
In order to get
$100,000 into the coffers of political organizations, Di Pietro, referring
to the Italian experience, said that they have to invent a contract of
$1-million to be given to friendly firms. That means that the real damage to
the taxpayers is not what goes into political organizations’ coffers, but,
most of the time, the entire amount of contracts promote things like the
selling of furs in the desert or fridges in the Arctic.
The perception in
the world about Canada is very good: I have a lot of respect for Canada,
said Di Pietro, but the virus is there.
Last year The Hill
Times reported the results of an international study about the perception in
the world about corruption in 60 countries. In particular, we wrote, The
Corruption Perception Index for 2003 published by Transparency
International, put Canada in 11th place, with Finland perceived as the most
honest. It’s not bad, however, considering the perception in the last four
years, you can see a steady decline of the perception of Canada in the
world. In fact, we were fifth in the year 1999 and seventh in 2001.The trend
is consistently negative and you can imagine what’s going to happen next
year if we don’t take tough and immediate action.
I checked the same
index this year and the results related to 2004. Canada has gone down
another point: we are 12th behind United Kingdom and ahead of Austria.
I’m eager to see
what happens next year, when the world will know about the Sponsorship
Scandal and the Gomery Inquiry results. |
