Lack of transparency in political finance and poor Parliamentary oversight key governance issues
By Uditha Jayasinghe
Lack of transparency in political finance and poor Parliamentary oversight were quoted as the key governance problems in Sri Lank in the newly released Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2008.
Sri Lanka’s score remains unchanged from the previous year, but the rank has deteriorated by two to 94. However, Sri Lanka’s ranking peaked in 2002 with a score of 3.7 but gradually declined to 3.5 two years later. It has since hovered around the 3.1 mark.
Complied by Transparency International, the CPI lists Sri Lanka at the 94th position among 180 countries. Sri Lanka’s score remains at a low 3.2, indicating a serious corruption problem in the public sector. Neighbouring countries except Bhutan, all score below 3.5 and only India (3.4) and Sri Lanka are above a score of 3 with Maldives (2.8), Nepal (2.7), Pakistan (2.5) and Bangladesh (2.1) remaining with low scores. Analysts attribute India’s position to the implementation of the Right to Information Act.
Explaining the significance of the CPI, Transparency International Sri Lanka’s Executive Director J.C. Weliamuna said that the Index ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians. It measures each country’s level of corruption and places it on a scale from 0 to 10, where 10 stands for ‘highly clean’ and 0 stands for ‘highly corrupt’.
The CPI focuses on corruption in the public sector and defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain.
In conducting the surveys used in compiling the Index, questions that relate to misuse of public power for private benefit are asked. These include bribery of public officials, kickbacks in public procurement and embezzlement of public funds.
The 2008 Index indicates that irrespective of the countries being rich or poor, or being in the East or West, corruption prevails. Among the poor countries, Barbados (7.0), Chile (6.9), Slovenia (6.7), and Estonia (6.6) have scored higher. They are known to take serious measures to beat corruption within their countries.
In the last slot in the Index are Somalia (1.0), Myanmar (1.3), Iraq (1.3), Haiti (1.4), Afghanistan (1.5) and Sudan (1.6). This is attributed to the internal and external conflicts and dictatorial regimes that existed in those countries and is quoted as an eye-opener to countries like Sri Lanka with the ongoing internal conflict. Topping the list for 2008 are New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden sharing the highest score of 9.3 followed immediately by Singapore (9.2), Finland (9.0) and Iceland (8.9).
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