December 9, is International Anti Corruption Day, observed annually since 2003, when the United Nations Convention against Corruption was adopted. There are 177 countries that have signed the Convention.
It is estimated that more than $1 trillion is paid in bribes and another $2.6 trillion stolen annually through corruption.
Corruption is a serious impediment to growth, a subject I have written about extensively in my blogs, columns and book Custom Maid Revolution for New World Disorder (Chapter 2, Will Rogers Confucian, pp. 553-608).
The “Corruption Triangle” developed by Donald Cressey, a sociologist-criminologist posited that for corruption to take place, there must be a congruence of three critical and indispensable elements. Motivation, opportunity and rationalization.
Motivation is the actual or perceived need for wealth, power, influence, or just basic food and shelter. Rationalization is the process of justification: everyone does it; can get away with it, or a basic life and death survival question. Opportunity is the circumstances that enable the execution and concealment of the corrupt act.
Internal controls are meant to prevent and detect corrupt acts. On a national level, the internal controls in a constitutional democracy are the system of separation of powers and checks and balances to operate and run an effective representative government. In a totalitarian dictatorship there are none.
However, in democracies, built in inefficiencies intentionally designed by lobbyists and lawyers for their cunning clients, that their paid legislators enact into laws, is the norm that allows for loopholes that enable corruption.
Corruption is not merely dishonest or unethical conduct for material gain. It is any impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle to serve vested interests.
Patronage politics ferments corruption, especially when boundaries of power blur, institutions overstep into each-others legal domains, subverting and compromising the independence of oversight bodies.
Citizens in many countries are taking to the streets protesting the corruption of politics. Not enough. We the Maids, the people, have to do a lot more to sweep out the Triangle of Corruption that permeates dirty politics and sweep in a clean change of the guard. Doing nothing is abetting corruption. Worse, it is corruption.