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Article Excerpt
Guatemala hosted the 12th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in the capital Nov. 15-18. The biennial affair first convened in 1983 and has since become the most prominent international forum for anti-corruption exchanges. Some 1,500 officials of 164 governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) attended the meetings. The presidents of the isthmus utilized the meetings to announce plans for a region free of corruption by 2010. This would be a tall order on its own, considering the countries of the region's unimpressive standings in Transparency International's (TI) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), but it is further complicated by competing visions of what constitutes corruption.
An analysis by Inforpress Centroamericana on the subject identifies two opposing visions. One is the hegemonic vision TI focuses on that considers corruption as an obstacle to foreign investment. The other, counterhegemonic, sees corruption as a structural problem that deprives citizens of their rights to education, health services, adequate housing, and other attributes of a just society.
TI makes no excuses for its focus. From its beginnings in 1993, it has had its sights set on international trade and, before becoming Transparency International, considered calling itself the International Business Monitor, said Inforpress. TI's founder was Peter Eigen, a World Bank (WB) official who was dissatisfied with the bank's failure to deal with corruption in the projects it financed. TI looked at corruption on the grand scale, emphasizing bribery and other irregular financial practices between the multinational corporations that carried out the World Bank projects and the state officials of developing countries.
Most of TI's financing comes from governments. In 2004, 79% of the organization's budget came from the European Union (EU), the Foreign Ministries...
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More articles from NotiCen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs
NICARAGUA'S PRESIDENT-ELECT SIGNALS HOW HE WILL GOVERN., November 30, 2006
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