Anti-corruption programme being designed by the Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa
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- 11 / 15 / 2007
An anti-corruption programme being designed by the Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa could serve as a model in Latin America, where many countries are plagued by this social ill, which acts as a curb on development and even as a threat to political stability.
In Transparency Internationals "corruption perceptions index" (CPI), Ecuador ranked 150th this year, with a score of 2.1 -- a far cry from Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica, which had the highest scores in the region (7.6, 7.0 and 5.0, respectively), and only ahead of Venezuela, which ranked lowest in the region with a score of 2.0.
According to the annual report, which is based on surveys carried out by the Berlin-based global anti-corruption watchdog, a CPI score below 3.0 (on a scale of 10) suggests that corruption is "rampant."
Because of their qualms about the CPI, officials in the administration of the left-leaning Correa, who took office in January, decided to come up with their own index.
"The result may be even worse, but at least we will know where we stand, based on our own reality, and can identify a starting-point for tackling the problem," José Luis Cortázar, head of the National Anti-Corruption Secretariat, told IPS.
The Secretariat, which has the rank of a ministry and reports directly to the president, was created by Correa early this year as part of the administrations "frontal assault on corruption," which puts more of an emphasis on prevention than punishment, said Cortázar.
The Secretariat aims to foment a new "anti-corruption trend" under the theme "a policy of honesty, efficiency and fairness," to be launched possibly "between Dec. 10 and 17, depending on President Correas agenda," said the official.
The idea is to create groups of "legionnaires against corruption" -- ordinary citizens who will fan out across the country to promote the anti-corruption movement.
The initiative emerged from "a participative process for drawing up a national policy to fight corruption," said Cortázar.
Ecuadors new civilian anti-corruption corps would have some points in common with the young "social workers" who were assigned to gas stations in Cuba in late 2005 to keep track of inventory and receipts, in an attempt to crack down on petty corruption among employees.
Shortly after 10,444 of these young monitors were deployed at 2,039 government-owned gas stations around the country, sales revenues more than doubled, to nearly 100,000 dollars a day on average, according to figures released by President Fidel Castro in December 2005.
Thousands of young men and women are now working as monitors in different sectors of the economy to prevent the siphoning off of resources.
In an interview published Monday by the state-run daily newspaper Trabajadores, Osiris Martínez, head of the directorate of penal prosecutions in the Cuban attorney-generals office, said the corruption that exists in this socialist country is "basically" administrative and economic. She mentioned, for example, the use of public goods for private gain.
"Luckily, at the highest levels of the state and government we do not have political corruption, which is why we say that this problem has not undermined the essence of society here," said Martínez. And although she admitted that "there could be one isolated case, one person," at those levels, she said it would be quickly detected, and that the individual would be severely punished.
Martínez agreed with other experts that the economic crisis that shook Cuba in the 1990s, and monetary measures adopted to confront it, "to some extent favoured the resurgence of this problem, which was not entirely absent in Cuba, but was not widespread either."
At a Nov. 7-9 international meeting on society and the challenges posed by corruption, held in Havana, assistant attorney general Carlos Raúl Concepción announced that the government was working on "perfecting" the description of about 30 different crimes in the penal code, in order to apply stiffer sanctions.
The official also said that "the reappearance of cases of corruption" in this Caribbean island nation has been seen "mainly in the business sector and at the middle management level," and that so far, there are no "criminal organisations."
For his part, Cortázar spoke with a small group of foreign journalists after describing Ecuadors new anti-corruption policy in one of the sessions of the international meeting, which drew experts from around 20 countries to the Cuban capital last week.
The 17th Ibero-American summit of heads of state and government, which took place Nov. 8-10 in Chile, also issued a special communiqué warning that corruption threatens social cohesion -a key focus of the summit- and stressing that in order to fight the phenomenon, it is essential to strengthen cooperation at the national, regional and international levels. The statement put out by the leaders of Latin America, Spain, Portugal and Andorra said the United Nations Convention Against Corruption was a major step forward in terms of international standards, with respect to promoting preventive measures and bolstering enforcement.
With a view to the second session of the conference of states party to the Convention, to take place Jan. 28-Feb. 1, 2008 in Indonesia, the leaders underscored the importance of the Ibero-American countries coming together to establish a regional and international oversight mechanism.
Source: By Patricia Grogg
In Transparency Internationals "corruption perceptions index" (CPI), Ecuador ranked 150th this year, with a score of 2.1 -- a far cry from Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica, which had the highest scores in the region (7.6, 7.0 and 5.0, respectively), and only ahead of Venezuela, which ranked lowest in the region with a score of 2.0.
According to the annual report, which is based on surveys carried out by the Berlin-based global anti-corruption watchdog, a CPI score below 3.0 (on a scale of 10) suggests that corruption is "rampant."
Because of their qualms about the CPI, officials in the administration of the left-leaning Correa, who took office in January, decided to come up with their own index.
"The result may be even worse, but at least we will know where we stand, based on our own reality, and can identify a starting-point for tackling the problem," José Luis Cortázar, head of the National Anti-Corruption Secretariat, told IPS.
The Secretariat, which has the rank of a ministry and reports directly to the president, was created by Correa early this year as part of the administrations "frontal assault on corruption," which puts more of an emphasis on prevention than punishment, said Cortázar.
The Secretariat aims to foment a new "anti-corruption trend" under the theme "a policy of honesty, efficiency and fairness," to be launched possibly "between Dec. 10 and 17, depending on President Correas agenda," said the official.
The idea is to create groups of "legionnaires against corruption" -- ordinary citizens who will fan out across the country to promote the anti-corruption movement.
The initiative emerged from "a participative process for drawing up a national policy to fight corruption," said Cortázar.
Ecuadors new civilian anti-corruption corps would have some points in common with the young "social workers" who were assigned to gas stations in Cuba in late 2005 to keep track of inventory and receipts, in an attempt to crack down on petty corruption among employees.
Shortly after 10,444 of these young monitors were deployed at 2,039 government-owned gas stations around the country, sales revenues more than doubled, to nearly 100,000 dollars a day on average, according to figures released by President Fidel Castro in December 2005.
Thousands of young men and women are now working as monitors in different sectors of the economy to prevent the siphoning off of resources.
In an interview published Monday by the state-run daily newspaper Trabajadores, Osiris Martínez, head of the directorate of penal prosecutions in the Cuban attorney-generals office, said the corruption that exists in this socialist country is "basically" administrative and economic. She mentioned, for example, the use of public goods for private gain.
"Luckily, at the highest levels of the state and government we do not have political corruption, which is why we say that this problem has not undermined the essence of society here," said Martínez. And although she admitted that "there could be one isolated case, one person," at those levels, she said it would be quickly detected, and that the individual would be severely punished.
Martínez agreed with other experts that the economic crisis that shook Cuba in the 1990s, and monetary measures adopted to confront it, "to some extent favoured the resurgence of this problem, which was not entirely absent in Cuba, but was not widespread either."
At a Nov. 7-9 international meeting on society and the challenges posed by corruption, held in Havana, assistant attorney general Carlos Raúl Concepción announced that the government was working on "perfecting" the description of about 30 different crimes in the penal code, in order to apply stiffer sanctions.
The official also said that "the reappearance of cases of corruption" in this Caribbean island nation has been seen "mainly in the business sector and at the middle management level," and that so far, there are no "criminal organisations."
For his part, Cortázar spoke with a small group of foreign journalists after describing Ecuadors new anti-corruption policy in one of the sessions of the international meeting, which drew experts from around 20 countries to the Cuban capital last week.
The 17th Ibero-American summit of heads of state and government, which took place Nov. 8-10 in Chile, also issued a special communiqué warning that corruption threatens social cohesion -a key focus of the summit- and stressing that in order to fight the phenomenon, it is essential to strengthen cooperation at the national, regional and international levels. The statement put out by the leaders of Latin America, Spain, Portugal and Andorra said the United Nations Convention Against Corruption was a major step forward in terms of international standards, with respect to promoting preventive measures and bolstering enforcement.
With a view to the second session of the conference of states party to the Convention, to take place Jan. 28-Feb. 1, 2008 in Indonesia, the leaders underscored the importance of the Ibero-American countries coming together to establish a regional and international oversight mechanism.
Source: By Patricia Grogg
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