SL drops 12 places in Corruption Perception Index

Despite a marginal score change of 36, Sri Lanka has dropped a dozen places in the latest Corruption Perception Index compiled by Transparency International (TI), hitting 95 from 176 countries when compared with 2015. 

Sri Lanka, which was ranked 83 just two years ago, failed to push up the ranks and slotted in behind India (79), Singapore (7), Malaysia (55) and Rwanda (54). 

“Despite the passing of the Right to Information Act and the adoption of the Open Government Partnership National Action Plan, we are yet to see anti-corruption rhetoric leading to strong action. A legislative reform agenda alone is not enough to put an end to impunity,” said Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) Executive Director Asoka Obeyesekere. 

Controversies such as the bond issue, the alleged Australian corruption scandal implicating the President and delays in corruption-related prosecutions have raised serious questions about the Government’s commitment towards ‘Yahapalanaya’ and anti-corruption. 

 “It is often forgotten that the 19th Amendment gave CIABOC (the Bribery Commission) the power to institute prosecutions – therefore beyond the Government the public must hold the Independent Commission to account.”

Globally, the data reveals that a staggering 69% of the 176 countries scored below 50 in the 2016 CPI indicating the high levels of perceived public sector corruption prevalent throughout the world. 2016 also marks an alarming trend where more countries declined rather than improved in the overall index.

Denmark and New Zealand are jointly ranked first in the 2016 CPI with a score of 90 followed by Finland, Sweden and Switzerland ranked third, fourth and fifth respectively. 

India has scored the highest in the South Asian region with a score of 40 and ranked 79th overall. India is followed by Sri Lanka and the Maldives which are jointly ranked 95th.

TI said populist leaders like US President Donald Trump and French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen regularly drew links between a “corrupt elite” and the marginalisation of working people. But antiestablishment parties generally failed to address corruption once in office, the group said.

“In the case of Donald Trump, the first signs of such a betrayal of his promises are already there,” TI’s research chief Finn Heinrich wrote in a blog about the report. He said Trump was talking about “rolling back key anti-corruption legislation and ignoring potential conflicts of interest that will exacerbate, not control, corruption.”

To break the “vicious circle” between corruption and the unequal distribution of power and wealth in societies, TI said, governments should stop the revolving door between business leaders and high-ranking government positions.

It also called for greater controls on banks and other businesses that helped launder money, and moves to ban secret companies that hide the identities of their real owners.

TI said big corruption cases like those involving oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) in Brazil and Ukrainian ex-president Viktor Yanukovych showed how national revenues were being siphoned off to benefit the few, fuelling social exclusion.

Brazil’s score on the index had dropped over the past five years after a spate of corruption scandals, but independent law enforcement bodies there had begun bringing to justice those previously considered untouchable, TI said.

The Corruption Perceptions Index aggregates data from a number of different sources that provide perceptions of business people and country experts of the level of corruption in the public sector. The CPI 2016 is calculated using 13 different data sources from 12 different institutions that capture perceptions of corruption within the past two years.

The ranking seemed to resonate with growing public discontent with the Yahapalanaya administration on corruption issues. The Government’s failure to bring culprits in the February 2015 treasury bond scam to book, and inability to check corruption within its own ranks have fuelled accusations that the administration that was swept to power on an anti-corruption platform had lost its way. Corruption investigations involving members of the former Rajapaksa Government have also stalled, with no significant prosecutions or convictions to date.