Corruption contrast: When guilt or indifference depends on one's geography
In the English market town of High Wycombe, the Mayor and his fellow publicly elected local leaders sit on scales in public at the start and end of their period in office and their weight announced.
Those whose weight has not increased whilst in power are cheered and applauded for their commitment to selfless public service. Those who have added a few pounds are booed for living too well at the expense off the people.
This ceremony goes back hundreds of years and whilst now it is mere traditional and whimsy, at its heart is an abiding problem: Why is it that when everyone proclaims themselves against corruption is there so much of it around? Is it inevitable that when you put power with discretion in how that power is deployed, abuse is so often the consequence?
Some years ago, I was talking to a young immigration official from Singapore about this and he said he just didn’t get it. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I work at the airport. My power, my discretion is to grant or refuse entry. We have all the usual anti-corruption mechanisms: we don’t know to which desk we will be allocated. We’re regularly swapped around. Integrity checks are carried out. But my thought is this: if I got caught taking a bribe, I’d lose my job, be prosecuted and probably end up in jail.
My picture would be on the news. I’d never get another job, in the public or the private sector. My family name would be so damaged, no one would marry me, or my sisters, come to that and one or both of my parents would probably kill themselves from shame. How much would you need to offer me to risk all that when all I can do is allow or deny a visa?’
There is a real contrast between countries in which public money is perceived as belonging to everyone, its theft as stealing from each and every one of your fellow citizens, and those where the public purse belongs to no one, so helping yourself doesn’t actually harm a real person and anyway, through official position and perverse logic you feel yourself somehow entitled.
Maybe clear public disapproval, like the booing of an over-indulgent Mayor or the shaming of a corrupt immigration officer, is the only real deterrent.
And there’s the rub: Sadly, too many of us find the possession and display of significant wealth has a seductive glitter that eclipses questions about how such wealth may have been acquired.
Twitter: @dawoodmccallum *Writes as Dawood Ali McCallum
Neil McCallum
Author of five novels, Mrs A’s Indian Gentlemen* being the latest