Corruption capital - 80% of Jamaicans think our public officials are rotten
Published:Sunday | March 20, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Livern Barrett, Staff Reporter
A STUDY directed by a United States-based academic institute has found that 81 per cent of Jamaicans believe their politicians and other public officials are corrupt.
By contrast, however, the study, directed by the Latin America Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), based at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, found that only 7.8 per cent of Jamaicans have reported direct experience of corruption victimisation or petty corruption.
Despite this, the study, conducted by teams from Vanderbilt University and the University of the West Indies, Mona, describes the level of corruption perception among Jamaicans as "alarmingly high" in its 2010 biennial report.
"That is close to the entire population," lamented Balford Lewis, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona, who was part of the team that conducted the study.
The study, which defined corruption as the misuse of entrusted power for private benefit, also found that 45 per cent of respondents who thought corruption was "very common" indicated that they were less likely to support any form of governance.
Fifty-five per cent of those who viewed corruption as "uncommon" said they were unlikely to support governance, a clear indication, according to Lewis, that "people who perceive corruption to be high are less likely to support the affairs of the State and also less likely to believe in governments".
The corruption perception figure, though slightly better than the 85 per cent and 83 per cent recorded in two previous studies, still ranked Jamaica second highest among the 25 countries that participated in LAPOP's 2010 corruption perception survey.
"Jamaica is virtually at the top of the chart, registering the second-highest level of citizens' lack of confidence in the integrity of elected and other public officials among these countries," read a section of the study, which was funded by the United States Agency for International Development.
While conceding that this may not be an indication of actual corruption, Lewis told The Sunday Gleaner yesterday that it was important to measure perception, arguing that it drives people's behaviour, and to a great extent, affects their attitude towards public officials.
"Whether they respect them, whether they have trust in them, whether they participate in the affairs of governance, and things like those, when we look at the level of trust in public institutions, it has a lot to do with the fact that people believe the bureaucracy is corrupt," he explained.
The findings of the study seemed hardly surprising to Professor Trevor Munroe, the director of the National Integrity Action Forum, who asserted that Jamaicans are taking note of instances where a prima facie case has been made out in the public domain against "untouchables" and nothing is done.
Corruption allegations
He cited the case involving Joseph Hibbert, the member of parliament for East Rural St Andrew and former junior minister for transport and works, who has been embroiled in corruption allegations involving British bridge-building firm Mabey and Johnson since 2009.
Mabey and Johnson pleaded guilty to bribery charges that same year, but the case against Hibbert is still being investigated by the Jamaican police.
"No prosecution and no report to the public why that is not happening. Not a word. Jamaican people are not idiots, and this is just one, perhaps the most egregious, case," Munroe declared.
However, the study was not all bad news for Munroe, who said the 7.8 per cent recorded for corruption victimisation in 2010 was a substantial drop from the number recorded in recent years.
"Why this is very good news is that it is a substantial drop from the mid-decades when it was about 30 per cent and almost three times the global average," he pointed out.