DailyMirror:
The topic of bribery has a long history perhaps even as long as the oldest profession in the world!
Bribery and corruption go hand in hand & is relevant to public officials as well as the corporate world. Acceptance of bribery as something wrong has however not stopped the levels of bribery & corruption that prevails. It is not only confined to Sri Lanka alone and manifests itself in all parts of the world. Needless to say the issue that needs to be highlighted is that bribery has become diluted in so far as its acceptance by western interests to invest in the Third World while chiding the Third World for bribery & corrupt practices.
Bribery requires two participants – the one who gives the bribe and the one who takes it. Initiation can come from either side. Bribing comes in the form of money, a favour or something of value that is promised, given or taken from an individual or corporation so that a person’s views, opinions or decisions sway towards the person giving the bribe. Kickbacks are often associated with bribes and these are all forms of commissions. An oft used example is how customs officials demand bribes to allow (or disallow) goods.
Most countries today are plagued with large scale corruptions which has become embedded into the culture where taking bribes, giving bribes becomes part and parcel of day to day living. Another example is how people have to pay a “fee” to get a building permit from the municipality and a favourable decision! Anyone following the rules have to undergo severe hardships while others can easily get their plans done with a few notes passed! There are ample more examples that can be taken or given as a means to showcase bribery that takes place around us. The culprits all covering different sectors of society & different personages as well. The only difference being the amount or favor being exchanged. Bribery is bribery whatever its quantitative or qualitative value. Or would readers disagree?
Third World countries
In most of the Third World countries where bribery and corruption is rampant, where daily official services that should be officially carried end up a means to solicit bribes. In fact these officials who have become so used to taking bribes feel they are doing us a favor for the work they will do for us as a result of that additional payment or favor. This is so in most government offices in Third World countries where the public has to make a payment in order to get some work done, especially when the work is what they are paid to do. Such cases are ample and they have provided a means of gaining private financial incomes and has led to a shadow system that is out of control. Often a file to move from one desk to another need to have more than a few palms filled to induce movement! This is a major reason why Government administrative services cannot progress towards functioning as a true service center. Despite numerous initiations taken over the years unless bribery and corruption is controlled from the roots nothing meaningful will happen.
Nevertheless, it comes as no surprise how definitions are being applied with discrimination. How so, well human rights violations to the US, UK and west doesn’t cover any of their wrong doing to the countries they are forcefully occupying, bombarding indiscriminately or the colossal loss of civilian life that take place every hour in all of the countries they are using brute force in. Similarly, “all paid vacations” “free text books’, “lunch for physicians and staff in office” “dinner lectures” offered by drug companies in the West are referred to as “promotions” but they become “bribes” in Third World countries. Doctors in First World and Third World countries are welcome to agree or comment. Ambiguity and double talk will never solve the bribery and corruption menace in any parts of the world. In fact the UN itself suffers from different types of corruption so its drive to stop corruption in other parts of the world becomes a questionable feature itself.
Drawing the line
How do we really draw the line between different aspects of bribing? Making the decision complicated is the challenge of deciding when to accept a gift or not. For example, until the 16th century it was considered wrong to take interest on money. Islamic countries still consider this taboo. However, today the trend has become too complicated and the offshoots further complicating the outcomes. While bribery on the surface is perceived as a shameful act, it is taking place all over the world. Much of this is due to the open and free market where competition is the hallmark of progress. With the buy and sell phenomena it is an easy solution to “reward” people to buy one’s product and it becomes an easy driver than always focusing on better service! Bribery therefore treats people as commodities whose honor can be bought and sold. It is this degrading aspect that needs to change.
Determining what
isn’t a bribe
We are all in agreement that bribery is wrong but now comes the difficult question. How do we determine what is and isn’t a bribe, or when our actions are close to a bribe. What it entails is how do we decide to draw the line? A perfect example is school admissions. We are all aware that schools and principals in particular are forbidden from taking bribes to admit students…however anxious parents would rather pay a “donation” and have their child admitted to a school without having to testify against a principal or staff member or a clerical staff for taking the bribe to admit his/her child. So when we know it is wrong to steal why would we hesitate to pass judgment on bribing especially when it becomes a “necessary evil” in the eyes of most parents? More often than not we take the quantitative stand. A little giving or taking is better than the millions that pass hands in public office or in large corporates is the oft used excuse. So we find reasons to justify what we do and it is this justification that ends up distorting the issue.
Reiterating again those corrupt and those taking bribes have no moral right to bring laws or take actions against those that engage in the same act in a smaller or larger capacity and it is this pointing of fingers without a remedy that simply lengthens the solution to bribery and corruption.
If bribery is wrong the confusion lies in why there is any need to create an active and passive bribery. Active bribery defined by the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption states that bribery is “the promising, offering or giving by any person, directly or indirectly, of any undue advantage for himself or herself or for anyone else, for him or her to act or refrain from acting in the exercise of his or her functions”, while passive bribery is defined as “the request or the receipt directly or indirectly of any undue advantage, for himself or herself or for anyone else, or the acceptance of an offer or a promise of such an advantage to act or refrain from acting in the exercise of his or her functions’.
The dissociation of the two was mostly to make prosecution of bribery offenses easier since there is no formal deal only a mutual understanding. In the case of bribes we all accept it violates professional ethics & certainly all cases of offering of gifts are not meant as bribes but it becomes a tedious task to differentiate and the deciding factor rests upon the expectations of the person giving.
In USA, UK
Be that as it may bribery, giving or receiving to influence performance of official/public duties has been and continues to be part of our economic structure. Bribes are said to amount to 1% of US gross national product yet there are enough of ethical codes, criminal laws censuring bribery. In the UK, while bribery is frowned upon there are plenty of bribes offered by British corporations to solicit favorable interest to them in foreign countries.
You escape prosecution in Britain because corruption performed abroad is not illegal in UK and what is more the British government gives you a tax break because the “commissions” paid abroad are accepted as deductible expense! A case in point is Prince Andrews reference to doing business in Krygyzstan courtesy Wikileaks. In the US we can cite the cases of Madoff & Raj Rajaratnam recently accused of insider trading. Even prisoner exchanges are a means of bribes. Look around and countless more examples can be found.
In business relationships giving and accepting gifts though part of the business relationship does touch aspects of professional ethics. While companies have code of conduct against accepting gifts individually these codes are never followed. How can a CEO refuse a game of golf?
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development having reviewed rich countries following the 1997 anti-bribery convention found Britain to be the worst culprit in terms of criminalizing bribery of foreign officials.
The OECD held that British companies were among the worst offenders with 37 of 55 of UK companies being publicly blacklisted by the World Bank and are debarred from participating in contracts because of their corrupt practices. Transparency International goes on to confirm that bribes are most common in the arms trade, public works & big infrastructure projects & again British companies are key players in all these sectors.
In 1999, Transparency International Germany released a new Bribe Payers Index ranking 19 leading exporting countries and the manner their corporations indulged in bribery abroad. Though US laws prohibit bribing US corporations use bribery to win contracts in developing countries, so do Japan, Central European countries and Britain. How can these countries preach to the Third World when they are equally corrupt?
The media has an integral role to play as a focal point to provide information nevertheless in exposing cases of bribery media must remain completely unbiased. in Sri Lanka that expectation is rarely fulfilled with some papers in the past even threatening people of exposing their affairs unless substantial amounts of “favors” were offered to the paper.
Putting an end
As old as bribery is it is unlikely that we can see a real end to it. Helping to curb the menace rightly must start from the top. Yet the systems are programmed in such a way that people are drawn into the system and once drawn they can rarely come out. Politicians become easy prey. Their desire for political acceptance necessitates plenty of public approval. That approval comes with the need to create publicity and for the presence of the politicians and his promotion a lot of give and take is required & those that give eventually wait to take back once the politician comes into power & politicians themselves must succumb. It is thereafter they draw their own paths that ensures they dictate what they give and take.
In third world countries in particular, a good way to curb bribery and corrupt practices is to ensure that all service sectors function as they should and staff are strictly told what their duties are in terms of their job profile.
There are countless initiatives in progress on curbing bribery and corrupt practices. In countries where it has become part and parcel of life ending the menace will become an arduous task for bribery and corruption must stop from the top and so long as people feel that it is harmless to take a few hundreds when the VVIPs are taking things in millions the trend is likely to continue.
Nevertheless, it is morally wrong and a simple realization that a wrong is wrong should be enough to make anyone realize where the buck must stop for both the briber and the person taking the bribe.