Leis, The ethical coalition

Corruption and incompetence in Latin America over the past 25 years have cost the region some $600 billion, or about $24 billion per year.

The cannon shots of corruption are impressive, given that “For every $100,000 the commission will be dedicated to a high functionary, but not one the top rank. For every million dollars, the directors generals will be interested. For every $10 million, and minister and his principal collaborators will be interested. For every $100 million, the serious attention of a head of state can be awakened.” (Gustavo Coronel.)

Corruption is characterized by these elements:

• Every corrupt act consists of a transgression against a norm.

• It is done to obtain a private benefit.

• It arises from the exercise of an assigned function.

• The corrupt individual always attempts to actively conceal his or her behavior.

The corrupt act tends to revolve around a monopoly of power controlling a good or service, which includes discretion to decide who will receive and who will not, and in this power a lack of transparency is seen, which is understood as a lack of controls of the person in his or her function.

In Panama, anti-corruption action must necessarily be multilateral. It needs the public and private examples of the president and his team, of a code of ethics, and of the legislators and magistrates, because if it is true that a fish rots from the head down, the example of integrity also flows in the same direction.

Examples must also be given by imposing sanctions on serious transgressors, since in the situations in which corruption has spread, the population does not believe in the promises that the politicians proffer. Audits must be complemented by diagnoses of vulnerability to corruption, which permits the establishment of a system of integrity that not only punishes, but prevents the scourge. And yes, at the same time the community must express from the bottom up its proposed set of values to supersede the existing anti-values. For this it is fundamental to involve the population in the diagnosis and the struggle to counter-act the corrupt systems. If they are consulted, citizens are good sources to locate where corruption occurs and to figure out how to fight it.

Participative diagnoses, like those effected by the Ecumenical Committee’s Pro-Integrity project these days, are allowing many civic leaders, working people, entrepreneurs, women, farmers, youngsters and indigenous people not only to understand the current proposals of the government and civil society but to enrich them with their valuable contributions, avoiding the noxious elitism that argues that only the experts have the answers.

The Brazilian political thinker Cristovam Buarque clearly establishes that in the strategy against corruption and poverty “we need a coalition of forces that will do what it does for ethical reasons, much more than for political reasons.”

Leonardo Boff expands on this thus: “But we need, more than anything, a utopia --- to keep humanity together in the same common house against those who seek to divide it into different unequal parts, and the unequals into dissimilars. It follows that we must empower the niche where ethics erupt: the emotional intelligence, the deep passion --- pathos --- from which values emerge. Without feeling for the other person’s dignity, as someone similar and near, a humanitarian ethic will never arise. Moreover, it is important to live --- day by day and beyond cultural differences --- three principles that are understandable by everybody: care to protect life and the Earth, cooperation that turns two plus two into five, and the responsibility to be concerned that the consequences of our practices be beneficial. And finally, to feed a spiritual aura that will make sense of it all. The new era will be of ethics or it won’t be.”

We need to put together an ethical coalition that rises above private, partisan or sectorial interests, endowed with a vision of the state and reaching out to assemble forces to confront corruption, and also poverty and exclusion.

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Leis, The Ethical Coalition
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opinion

The ethical coalition