Corruption in aid and political attitudes

Corruption in aid and political attitudes
No sudden occurrence
Guyana and the Wider World
By Dr Clive Thomas
Stabroek News
June 8, 2003

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One of the premises of my thesis about the criminalisation of the state as a deviant form of the post-colonial state is that this is not a ‘sudden occurrence’ developing over the last year or so, but has deep roots in the process of degeneration of the economy, society and politics, which had in fact started shortly after the period of Independence. In the early years this process was not recognised, mainly because these origins were buried under many layers of society, and the outcome that we now face was neither inevitable nor pre-determined. It is because of this premise that I have set so much store in tracing the origins, nature, and size of the shadow economy in Guyana over time. In the articles that dealt with this topic I noted with emphasis the transformation of the shadow economy from its origins in the illegal trade in banned goods and the foreign exchange restrictions of the 1980s to its present-day roots in transnational organised economy in which narcotics, money laundering, illegal border trade, body smuggling, gun-running and so forth, play the dominant role.

This premise has run through all the presentations so far and will hold true for all others to come unless I state otherwise. My purpose in restating this point here is to stress that it holds true for the recent discussion on the contributory roles of the international financial institutions (IFIs) and the donor governments in the persistence and growth of poor governance in Guyana. I feel compelled to make this point because of my conviction that this emphasis is overdue and furthermore before effective remedial action can be taken by these bodies to address this problem in their aid, the existence of the problem itself needs to be fully admitted.

Corruption in aid
Last week I sought to give examples of how by ignoring this problem these bodies can be themselves compromised. The position taken here is not novel. Indeed it has been widely referred to in the development literature, which has focused on crime, corruption, development and society. Readers would recall in this context that one of the reasons why many years ago the visa-section of the Canadian High Commission was transferred to Port-of-Spain was related to compromising situations that had arisen and were reported in the media. Similarly, in the recent past the US media have reported on the linkage between forged Guyanese passports, Indian nationals and the Indian High Commission. It is easy to forget these precedents to the recent US Embassy scandal (in the Carroll case). In last week’s article I had in fairness referred to all three incidents but these other two were deleted from the text, thereby reducing the significance of the observation on this score.

Writing in the Forum on Crime and Society (December 2002) Brian Cooksey made the telling observation that, for both aid agencies and recipients, addressing corruption in aid requires evidence of the nature and scope of the problem, a broad commitment to solve it and a strategy to address it.” He goes on to state that the “long-term legitimacy and survival” of these agencies require a radical revision in their mode of operation. For this to be done their own integrity systems should be exposed to the same “rigours of transparency and accountability as are expected of their development partners.” I hold to these recommendations very strongly.

The question that we need to ask is why have these concerns surfaced so forcefully in the literature on globalisation and development? This has come about because research has shown conclusively that donors have generally “accepted a degree of non-compliance with the stated aims of aid and a level of failure of targeted aid projects which beggar belief.” Further the research also shows that in particular “the disbursement culture” of the World Bank has made it difficult for that institution to mainstream anti-corruption concerns into projects they fund. As recently as 1998 one such study noted that even when World Bank employees complained about the quality of auditing of projects and indeed that audits revealed diversions, there were no substantial consequences for the perpetrators. The observation was also made that: “project supervisory functions are often inadequate to reveal or follow up effectively on instances of corruption, for example procurement.”

The contributory role of the IFIs and the donor community to poor governance in Guyana is not atypical. The case that I am therefore making, which is that if these bodies do not take an uncompromising stance towards corruption they will themselves be compromised is backed by a solid body of development literature research that is readily available. That literature reveals several instances where donors have been often reluctant to ‘blow the whistle’ even in instances where their own programmes are involved.

Surveying political attitudes
In concluding this aspect of the discussion let me return to the topic I ended with last week. If there is any remaining doubt about the importance of the discussion in this column over the past month, consider a few of the results of the first national survey of political attitudes in Guyana, which was conducted by the St Augustine Research Associates (SARA) during August-September 2001. This took place before the February jailbreak last year. The SARA survey showed that 56 per cent of the surveyed population was not satisfied with the working of democracy in the country. As many as 53 per cent of the surveyed population did not trust the judiciary “at all” or “much.” Further, 75 per cent did not trust the police. And indeed, fifty-four per cent of the surveyed population had “little hope” for the police (35 per cent) “no hope” (14 per cent) or “refused to say” (3 per cent).

Underlying these stark and saddening statistics are the sharp differences in racial perception of the country, which came out strikingly in the survey. Thus while as noted above 56 per cent of the surveyed population was not satisfied with the workings of democracy, the racial count showed that 79 per cent of the African-Guyanese held this view as compared to 40 per cent of the Indian-Guyanese. Similarly, while distrust of the police was high (75 per cent) as many as 80 per cent of the African-Guyanese distrusted the police as against to 6 per cent of the Indian-Guyanese.

Such attitudes underscore the vital significance of the interfacing role of governance in Guyana that this series has sought to highlight at this stage.

Next week we turn to another area of the argument I am presenting, which is to locate it in relation to the burgeoning literature on ‘failed states’ and globalisation.