President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Dr Warren Smith was not the only senior official in recent times to use a public forum to allude pointedly to the propensity in developing countries for funding provided by international lending agencies to disappear down dark, corruption-infested holes even as those awaiting the suffering-alleviation measures that these funds are intended to bring, sink deeper into destitution.
One of the points that has been made by Dr Smith as well as by the Heads of both the World Bank and the IMF, is that corruption, ironically, frequently thrives in situations that require the highest standards of both fiscal accountability and moral probity and that the absence of these virtues in times of difficulty attests to the level to which functionaries, sometimes operating at high levels within governmental and state systems are inclined to go in their excursions into what amounts to downright callousness. Worse, perhaps, is the fact that corruption at high levels has ‘graduated’ beyond the level of ‘lone wolf’ criminals into organised cabals involving tiers of state officials, where the skullduggery is broken down into clearly defined layers that provide guidelines that have to do with the sharing of the ill-gotten gains.
Worryingly, Dr Smith, like his counterparts in the World Bank and the IMF are, increasingly these days, infusing into financial aid, arrangements, conditions, and caveats, that have to do with accountability and sanctions and are, in the process, making the point, with a minimum of attendant fuss that a stage has been reached where even important and presumably trusted government functionaries cannot be relied upon to do the right thing; and while Dr. Smith et al are perfectly in order to nail their colours to the mast insofar as seeking the anti-corruption noose is concerned, one can anticipate instances, perhaps quite a few of them, in which their attempts to staunch the misdirection of resources intended for poverty-alleviation purposes are sabotaged by governments brandishing the authority of sovereign statehood and by extension their functional superiority.
Here, of course, is where the international support agencies need to do two things. First, to continue to push for transparency at the domestic level insofar as the management of aid-related funding is concerned, and secondly to seek to make common cause with compliant states to secure the backing of influential international organisations in order to have anti-corruption protocols further concretised and attended by clauses that speak to punish governments that persist in delinquency.
One of the concerns that gets far too little attention in countries claiming democratic credentials is the enormous latitude governments enjoy in terms of important issues like transparency and accountability and just how much latitude they enjoy as far as secrecy is concerned. There are separate roles here for the populace as a whole, for domestic local organisations, and for Parliament which, of course, can only be effective if they are not driven by the kind of partisan proclivities that stifle their potency.
One of the more important points made by Dr Smith in his recent presentation has to do with the absence of inclination by people as a whole to embrace policies and recommendations in circumstances where they are uncomfortable with those, including those that have to do with their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This derives from what is an understandable disinclination among ordinary, law-abiding citizens who may perhaps begin by judging governments using their own understanding of just what constitutes fairness and moral probity and afterwards discovering to their disappointment, nay, chagrin, that they have been duped.
