A news story that recently made headlines is the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio, a candidate in Ecuador’s 2023 presidential election. He was gunned down on August 9th during an election campaign. Villavicencio was a strong voice against corruption and crime. Before entering politics, he was an investigative journalist covering drug trafficking and corruption.
Corrupt people are powerful. In fact, the very definition of corruption indicates that it’s connected with power. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) defines corruption as “the use of public office for private gain or the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” It further asserts that corruption supports organized crime by shielding criminal entities from law enforcement and disruption orchestrated by dishonest public officials. Since Villavicencio was causing ‘disturbance and disruption’ to the powerful corrupt-criminal nexus, they just eliminated him.
The detrimental effects of corruption are all pervasive and endless. The March 15, 2023 brief from the World Bank, titled “Addressing Corruption,” affirms that corruption disproportionately affects the poor and vulnerable. It drives up the cost and diminishes access to essential services such as healthcare, education, and justice. On a broader scale, corruption hampers investments, thereby impacting economic growth and the creation of jobs. Corruption also erodes trust in governmental institutions and sustains the inequalities and dissatisfaction that can lead to the rise of violent extremism and conflicts.
The people in positions of power who make decisions on the distribution of resources or provide access to facilities often tend to become corrupt. British historian Lord Acton wrote in a letter to Bishop Mandell on April 5, 1887: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” His observation which has since become a famous quote is probably a timeless truth. Corruption by people in power was present in remote ancient times. In the book “Thinking about Bribery” published in 2017 by Cambridge University Press, the authors remark that “Bribery has probably existed for as long as there have been some forms of authority to bribe.” The book mentions that the Code of Urukagina, the oldest known legal code that dates back to around 2370 BC which is 4,392 years ago, includes provisions of punishments against bribe-taking by bureaucrats of Lagash. Lagash was an ancient Sumerian city that existed at the site of present-day Telloh – a village in south-eastern Iraq. Urukagina was the king of Lagash and his codes are widely acclaimed as the first documented instance of government reform.
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This article was published in the Daily Sun on August 29, 2023. Please read the full article here or here.