23rd May 2009

I’m so ashamed of the British Parliament right now. And I’m a little ashamed of myself, too.

A few days before the expenses scandal broke (Google it!), A and I were printing off the anti-corruption information that all government offices display, to put on our notice board in the office. A said ‘I have a stupid question …’ which is the way we often start conversations about each other’s cultures, “Is there corruption in the UK?”

I, in my infinite wisdom, said yes there is, but it’s a different kind of corruption. It’s more about vested interests and directing contracts to friends who are going to repay the favour in other ways – corruption, but a more subtle form. I told him workers there don't often slip public money into their pockets, or demand extra payment for doing something which is their normal job, or claim expenses for three day meetings when they were only away for one day. It happens sometimes, but it’s not a normal, ‘across the board’ thing.

Ha!

I must confess, I have tried to write this blog post in a way that doesn’t make me sound like an idiot who believes corruption only happens in developing countries and ‘nothing like that happens in my country’. But I was unsuccessful – because sometimes I am the idiot who thinks that ‘nothing like that happens in my country’. This was one of those times.

So apparently, claiming public money for things like houses you don’t actually live in (MPs) and accepting money to draft legislation in a certain way (House of Lords – yes, I’d forgotten about them) IS quite normal in the UK. And that makes me both furious and ashamed.

When we talked about it afterwards, A did point out that at least there was some outrage from press and the public about it in the UK. Here, it’s just accepted as normal - inevitable even. His words, not mine, but that’s certainly been my experience while talking to other Ethiopians here.

This certainly doesn’t excuse my (clearly undeserved) sense of moral superiority. That’s been well and truly smashed now, and so it should be. How can anyone from the UK berate another country’s government for using public money for personal gain when it’s so publicly apparent that’s exactly what they are doing? They’re going to be – rightly – told to get their own house in order first!

(Of course, none of this excuses the actions of the corrupt workers in any country – just because it’s happening in Britain doesn’t mean that it happening in India, or Nigeria, or Ethiopia is any more acceptable.)

A letter in a weekly magazine I get sent to me echoed my thoughts perfectly: a man who lives and works in DRC said that the donor community there works closely with the local governments to implore them to stop the corruption for the social and economic growth of the country. The actions of the UK government have not only betrayed the British tax payer, but have also damaged the credibility of organisations working in these countries. And it’s certainly not the ‘fat cats’ of any country that are affected because of this – it’s the normal people paying taxes and getting on with their lives that suffer.