Make no mistake about this vicious problem . This is probably one of the most important , if not the biggest one, if you are trying to answer to yourself “why the world is not a happier place”. Government corruption is one of the biggest problems in the modern world. Yes, we are, most of us al least living in democracy , but if you scratch a little deeper from the surface you will see that isn’t entirely true. In fact, that is not true at all. Yes you have a freedom do speak, to travel, to be happy and all of that “ postulates” of a free, legal state. But that can be applied only in micro level, not in macro level. If you take a closer look at the layout in every democratic state in the world you will see that the government is divided in three branches : Legislation, Government – executive power and Judicial. Those three should be, as the oldest constitution of the world , the Constitution of the United states says independent from each other. They call it “Checks and Balances” . The idea is that every branch of the government have the power to control the other one so the state power is not concentrated in only one branch of the government . That system is full of flaws. We can see that in Russia, Germany, even in the US. Leaders in those countries are untouchable and government don’t care for people. In the American famous Declaration of independence it has written that the people have the power to take down the corrupt government and create a new one , free of corruption. That was the idea. The power lies in the people, not in the government and the government is just a representation of the people’s will. We are witnesses that is far from the true. The concentration of the power lies in the executive branch and that is the President and his cabinet of ministers. In every constitution in the world there is a limitation for that place, and for a good reason. So, how come that for instance Vladimir Putin in is power for almost twenty years? What about German canceler Angela Merkel? That begs the question and that question is “Are the power – sovereignty lies in the people?” That was the idea but people lost that spark given by French revolution a long time ago. The corruption of a government is highly visible particularly in smaller states. First, the people rights are been reworked and diminished every day. Corporation run the smaller states. In those states , with no income , the government is forced to make deal with all kind of foreign investors, and the obvious example is giving a natural wealth, public road and other significant things in concessions to the investor for a long period of time. The people in some countries like Bolivia for example have a private owner of the water supply. So what that means, that you can’t drink water for free in democracy ? The answer is yes. So beside this what are the signs of corrupt government? A corrupt government doesn’t necessarily have to show all of these symptoms but I think that, the more symptoms one can see, the more the government is likely to be corrupt. Lack of transparency in the personal finances and investments of politicians and top-level administrators is probably the first sign.There is also a lack of transparency in government decisions and budget. The government is weaker than the interest groups and makes most of its decisions in the interest of the interest groups, rather than the interest benefit of the people country. You have the World Bank, the NATO alliance, and International monetary fund in every transition country. Those are the clear signs that the government is corrupted. In Latin America the only country without “these symptoms” was Venezuela under late Hugo Chavez.
Marisol Marquez
