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Liberia: Country Sets World Record, World Bank Corruption Control Statistics Indicates
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The Analyst (Monrovia)
23 July 2008
Posted to the web 23 July 2008
Corruption had become so endemic that observers have come to the conclusion that it is the virus that caused the "acquired fiscal management deficiency syndrome" of governance in Liberia.
Tolbert drew a dagger against it in the mid-1970s, and Doe publicly flogged a finance official for it in the late 1980s - all in vain. And not surprisingly by early 2000, Taylor began using it as trade-off for loyalty at the time insurgents were rocking him out of the throne.
But in vain contrast, Gyude Bryant declared a "Zero Tolerance for Corruption" in 2003 and then ducked when corruption reared up in its full regalia.
The incidence of corruption was such that by December 2005, Liberia lied at the bottom of the anti-corruption rankings of the World Bank Institute. But that picture has changed dramatically, surprising statisticians and making Liberia the world's most zero-tolerant post-conflict nation.
"But why...how?" is the question incredulous Liberians are asking. The Analyst Staff Writer has been sifting a recent World Bank report on corruption.
A recent report of the Worldwide Governance Indicators Institute (WGI) of the World Bank has indicated that at the current rate, Liberia has shown the largest improvement of any country in the world in controlling corruption.
The assertion, according to the WGI report, is advised by the country's anti-corruption assessment findings covering the period January 2004 to July 2008.
From a dismal low of 190th out of 206 countries ranked according to demonstrable standing in the fight against corruption in the public and private sectors in 2004, Liberia by 2007 rose dramatically to the 113th place out of the same number of countries.
The WGI indicators say corruption control lingered at the bottom 5% up to 2000 before rising steadily to 10% in 2002. It flopped during intense fighting in Liberia to between 8 and 9 per cent up to the end of 2005 before picking up the current speed with the inauguration of a civilian government headed by Africa's first elected female head of state, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.
Also from the low of 5% rating in the control of corruption in 1996, the WGI indicators revealed, Liberia currently stands close to 45% globally in corruption control and the regeneration of fiscal management and discipline that involve accountability, transparency, and commitment to budget controlled spending.
What this means in terms of the redistribution of the nation's wealth and the improvement of its damaged infrastructure is not clear, but according to the WGI indicators, Liberia has shown that it has the capacity to revive its economy, buttressed appropriately and in a timely manner by donor governments and international lending institutions.
It said the Indicators suggested that where there is commitment to reform, improvements in governance can and do occur and listed Liberia as a prime example of improvements in control of corruption.
WGI report, which gave no in-country examples of the Sirleaf Administration's anti-corruption efforts, noted that while it was difficult to pin statistical findings to actual improvements in-country, its indicators represented the best country assessment in governance. This is because, it said, it uses six different indicators to assess the quality of governance.
Corruption, it said, is just one of those indicators. The others are voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality.
The other is the rule of law, which the Bank said entails the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, including the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence.
The WGI report would not say where it will place Liberia in the area of the rule of law, but it noted that its "indicators are not based on a single source or opinion, but rather on the combined results of a large number of surveys of citizens, business enterprises, and experts in countries around the world."
It said the individual data sources underlying the aggregate indicators were drawn from survey institutes, think-tanks, NGOs, and international organizations, among other sources.
"The indicators are highly regarded as one of the best quality databases in the world. Oxford Analytica has called them 'the standard bearer' for measuring global governance," one recent account said of WGI's statistical data.
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The account suggested that Liberia's dramatic improvement in controlling corruption may have resulted from the strong steps taken by the Sirleaf Government during the last two years.
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