From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

2 POWER AND POLITICS I STEAL, THEREFORE I AMdifficult not to sell their votes for a bag of flour, and under-paid civilservants often fail to resist the temptation of a bribe. But attitudes andbeliefs also play a role. Oxfam staff in East Africa, Indonesia, andCentral America report a widespread belief in these regions thatpeople in positions of influence should help their families and homecommunity, a mindset that often leads to public tolerance of whatelsewhere would be seen as unacceptable graft.Poverty encourages petty corruption and, conversely, developmentdiminishes the threat it poses. Development increases the capacity ofthe government to collect taxes, pay decent wages, and spend more ondetecting and punishing malfeasance among officials – all of whichhelp to make corruption less corrosive of the system. In Cambodiaand the Czech Republic, salary top-ups for health workers, combinedwith commitments to codes of ethical good practice, led to a decline ininformal bribe payments and greater access to health services for poorpeople. 118 Unions and professional associations play an importantrole as partners in developing professional standards and in engagingworkers in improving services.The huge variations between countries at similar levels ofdevelopment suggest that more can be done than merely waiting forgrowth to help make the problem manageable. Japan exhibits similarlevels of corruption to much poorer Chile, according to TransparencyInternational’s 2007 Corruption Perception Index, while Uruguayranks well ahead of Italy, despite having only one-seventh of itsincome per capita. 119Grand corruption is different. It not only affects national budgets,as in the case of presidents Mobutu (Zaire) and Suharto (Indonesia),each of whom stole billions, but also the private sector, where ‘assetstripping’ by executives and owners robs industry of its ability toinvest, develop, and compete. More subtly, close ties between membersof socio-economic elites can lead to politicians and officials settingpolicies that favour their friends and family members in the privatesector, rather than the economy as a whole. In sectors such as oil and gas,arms, and construction, sizable bribes are routinely paid by large firmsto state officials in exchange for contracts, while numerous privatisationprogrammes have provided the pretext for large-scale transfers ofwealth from the state to well-connected members of the elite.87