Everybody's problem

Leader
Tuesday July 19, 2005
The Guardian

In the run-up to the G8 summit this month there was much talk of the need for "good governance" in Africa and other developing nations. Frustrated at the slow pace of poverty reduction and the poor returns for aid, wealthy donors have been focusing on governance as the solution to the corruption that has leaked too much money into the wrong pockets. Nigeria's new anti-corruption commission, for example, estimates that $375bn in funds has been skimmed off in one way or another since the country first gained independence 45 years ago. But governance - as the development expert Matthew Lockwood suggests - should not be used as a non-political means to circumvent government - since the role of government remains vital. The experience of the world's better-off countries suggests that corruption is easier to rail against than eradicate.
In Brazil, the government has seen the president's trusted chief of staff resign after a scandal uncovered instances of bribing opposition politicians for their votes. In Germany, the architect of the country's labour reforms is in the centre of a storm of allegations that Volkswagen used luxury holidays and prostitutes to win favours from workers' representatives on the company's board. In the US, a long-serving Republican congressman announced his retirement last week after a questionable property deal with an arms manufacturer. Meanwhile, the powerful Senate majority leader, Texas Republican Tom DeLay, remains mired in an investigation into his relationship with a Washington lobbyist named Jack Abramoff, who paid for Mr DeLay's $70,000 golfing holiday to Scotland.
What this proves is not simply that the world's donor nations are hypocrites. It is that scandals in public life are an ugly fact in even the most well-established democracies. Mr Abramoff, for example, once used his highly paid skills to win a US visa for Mobutu Sese Seko, the rapacious Zairean dictator. Too much of Africa's aid moves too easily into bank accounts held off-shore in the west. That should be halted. In cases such as this, charity really does begin at home.