Pandemic deepens violations of democracy and graft, says transparency

Photographer: Faouzi Dridi / AFP / Getty Images

With populations under block and governments exercising greater emergency powers, the Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated already alarming levels of corruption and democratic violations worldwide, Transparency International said.

Bribery for virus testing and the Purchasing medical supplies is enabling ruling elites to save taxpayer funds, according to a report by the global corruption control body published on Thursday. Transparent budget spending is also particularly difficult to apply during a pandemic, the report said.

“Covid-19 is not just an economic and health crisis,” said Delia Ferreira Rubio, director of Transparency, in the 2020 ranking of the cleanest to the most corrupt countries. “It is a corruption crisis. And that we are currently unable to manage. “

Denmark, New Zealand and Finland top the list of least corrupt countries, while South Sudan, Somalia and Syria were rated as the worst.

The United States dropped two more positions during the last year of Donald J. Trump’s presidency to 25th from 16 in 2017. His administration’s challenges to overseeing a $ 1 trillion aid package was an example of how the new measures to deal with the virus pose risks to transparent governance, Transparency said.

Read more: Covert graft pest encourages political change across Africa

This “raised serious concerns about corruption and marked a significant setback for long-standing democratic norms that promote responsible government,” the report said.

In places where corruption was already flourishing, authorities tended to tackle the outbreak with cashless health services. Countries scoring in the highest third of the graft index spent an average of 6.2% of the gross domestic product on health care, compared with 3.5% for the middle third and only 1.8% for the lower third, according to the report.

There was also a correlation between corruption and violations of democratic standards. Countries that did not report violations during the pandemic had an average Corruption Perception Index score of 74 against an average of 36 for those who perpetrated “serious violations”.

The corruption index is calculated using different data sources that aim to capture the perception of corruption in 180 countries and territories, with a score of zero denoting “highly corrupt” and 100 “very clean”.

“Countries with the highest levels of corruption tend to be the worst perpetrators of democratic and rule of law violations while managing the Covid-19 crisis,” according to the report.