Op-Ed Commentary

 

 

VenEconomy:
It’s not rubbish, it’s corruption!

If Vice-president José Vicente Rangel weren’t so set on radicalizing the electoral discourse, he might have managed to keep his cool in response to the results of the Corruption Perception Index 2006 published by Transparency International this week. According to this index, which evaluates the perception of corruption in 163 countries, Venezuela ranks 138 with a score of 2.3 out of a possible ten, where ten represents an ideal state of transparency.

The Vice-president of the Republic called Transparency International “mercenary” and its findings “pure rubbish” simply because it warned of the risks and weaknesses in Venezuela’s public sector that lend themselves to corruption. It is not by killing the messenger that the country will solve this serious problem that affects all spheres of society.

If President Chávez, right from his first year in office, had stopped to analyze (and correct) the indicators that pointed to the existence in Venezuela’s public sector of administrative practices that offered considerable opportunities for corruption, perhaps today, the government would be perceived as being less opaque and, as a consequence, people would not be submitted to so many arbitrary measures and decisions and would have their basic food, health and housing needs met in a more satisfactory manner.

Just the opposite has happened. The President and the institutions he manages, such as the Government Accountability Office, the General Prosecutor’s Office and the National Assembly, have turned a deaf ear to the hundreds of denouncements of corruption that have been made during these almost eight years since he has been in office. The upshot is that, today, Venezuela ranks as the second most corrupt country in Latin America, surpassed only by Haiti, and flagrant corruption abounds in all spheres where the government is involved, including its banner programs such as the missions.

This dismal result as far as transparency is concerned is reflected, for example, in the statements made last week by the Food Minister, Erika Farías, when she admitted that Misión Mercal had been seriously affected by the vices of corruption.
The Minister reported that, because of this, instead of Mercal covering 1.4 million Venezuelans, which was the goal they believed they had reached, it managed to benefit only 20% of that universe.

Another example is the denouncements made by Jesús Torrealba, a member of Movimiento Nueva Democracia, on Miguel Angel Rodríguez’ program broadcast by RCTV, on the network of corruption in the allocation of housing by the government through Misión Hábitat. Because of this, the President’s promise to give thousands of Venezuelans a decent roof over their heads has not been kept.

Chávez has been long enough in power to have learned that sound advice does not come from deaf ears.

VenEconomy is a Venezuela's leading specialized publisher in the economic and financial area. VenEconomy's Points of View on the issues of the day, as seen by VenEconomy during the last week. Petroleumworld not necessarily share these views.

Editor's Note: This commentary was originally published by VenEconomy, on 11/09/2006. Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest of our readers.

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Petroleumworld 11/10/06

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