Corruption tramples on people’s rights and only provides justice for those who can pay for it, argues Sofia Macher Batanero from our partner, the Instituto de Defensa Legal, in Peru.
Corruption is the scourge of our society. It causes poverty. Unless you tackle it head-on, you can’t fight poverty effectively.
'In Peru, it is the very institutions that are supposed to fight corruption that are the most corrupt'
‘Corruption is not a natural disaster: it is the cold and calculated robbery of the women, men, children who are least able of protecting themselves,’ says David Nussbaum, the director of Transparency International.
In Peru, it is the very institutions that are supposed to fight corruption that are the most corrupt: the judiciary, the police, congress and the central government.
Here people expect to pay a bribe to get any kind of service from the state. In one recent survey, 91 per cent of the population believed that Peru is corrupt, or very corrupt. What’s worse is that only one in ten Peruvians think that there will be less corruption in five years.
Alberto Fujimori
Peru’s extensive anti-corruption measures, and the trials of those involved in corruption with the Fujimori government, have not been enough to convince the country that things can change. Most people seem to have accepted corruption as a part of life, like a ghost that haunts the halls of power.
After a decade in power, Alberto Fujimori fled to Japan in November 2000, taking with him an alleged $600 million. He is wanted in Peru on charges of human rights abuses and corruption.
After he fled, Peruvians watched endless recordings of their politicians, judges and media moguls taking bribes on TV. Even government social programmes to fight poverty, like the ‘glass of milk’ initiative to give every child the right nutrition, were badly affected. How much of that programme actually reached the people it was supposed to help? How much of the money going into the programme was lost along the way?
Despite the fact that this service has since been decentralised, and is managed by the local authorities, the reports of corruption continue.
Cancer of corruption
The cancer of corruption is deeply destructive:
Corruption is a human rights issue. It distorts the idea of everyone being equal before the law. We have almost accepted that to get anything you have to pay a bribe. You don’t report it because you won’t get what you need.
Corruption changes the rules we live by. Those with money and power are above the rules because they can always get out of trouble by paying a bribe, so they trample over the rights of others.
Corruption also changes institutions - the same ones that are there to guarantee people’s rights, like the police or judiciary. It prevents these institutions from carrying out the role for which they were created. It means that there is no justice and no protection for those who cannot afford to pay for it.
Corruption degrades people’s dignity. The rules of the game are no longer the law or the constitution but bribery, cheating and influence. Corruption breeds judicial insecurity and perverts state bodies.
Corruption is all-pervasive, top down and reproduces the power relations of domination and subordination in society; it is the enemy of democracy. Where corruption is institutionalised there are no rules, no values and no respect for citizenship, as it becomes the ‘normal’ way of solving problems.
Fighting corruption
In the end, the only way to stop corruption in all its forms is for civil society to fight it wherever it is found. We should fight corruption in all we do: in political movements, in civil-society organisations, in unions and federations, in schools and, of course, in the state bodies. Social programmes should be run in transparent way and civil- society monitoring should be a deterrent for corruption in any area of society.
That’s the only way we will make our country a just, true democracy, with full respect for human rights.