Jaya Prakash: A trusted few can save many

The next time a disaster strikes, the funds and relief meant for victims should be co-ordinated from a nation or nations noted for their impeccable record in public probity. Then the world can banish the draining and distressing thought as to where all the aid went.

A mechanism exists for identifying countries where corruption is least likely. Transparency International - an organisation dedicated to strengthening civil society and fighting government corruption - issues annual rankings.

In its 2005 rankings, Iceland emerged as the least corrupt with the Scandinavian countries placing well. New Zealand and Singapore came close behind.

The need to avoid corruption is glaring. More than a year has passed since the devastating 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and by any reasonable reading that disaster, like others, was one more chance for opportunists and corrupt officials to line their pockets in the name of helping the stricken.

Corruption diminishes the quality of life in every country. That includes the rich, the poor and peoples all over the world yearning for that inalienable right to a better life.

The world's most powerful nation is not exempt. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans what the world saw was not the professionalism and expertise expected of a technological power. Instead, a dilatory, corruption-induced bullheadedness exposed crass incompetence of an unimaginable kind.

That same problem afflicts the grief-stricken survivors of last October's earthquake in Pakistan, arising out of that country's pervasive corruption culture.

Looking to government for leadership is as given as watching the sunrise every morning and in desperate times leadership without venality is the crucial difference that makes a country tick.

The exposure of influence peddling involving Republican lobbyist John Abramhoff in the United States underlines the need for a body to regulate financial reform and lobbying methods in wealthy nations.

In poorer nations we wind up with the cyclical mushrooming of corruption and poverty where each feeds the other.

High illiteracy and manipulation by the government of its people is but one facet of the harshness of life in Indonesia, for example. The mistrust causes such an unbridgeable divide that in extreme cases nations become ungovernable.

The reason governments in Ethiopia and Chad tend to be despotic has nothing to do with their people's tolerance. The lack of institutional safeguards preclude checks on knaves and their impropriety.

For poorer countries to achieve lower levels of corruption they need the freedom to assemble, speak and publish their views. When corrupt regimes clamp down on the press it is only because of the threats the press pose to their corrupt ways.

While the rich should continue to provide all manner of humanitarian aid, it needs to be directed to specific needs. This could include disease control, famine, and hygienic sanitation - all activities, which can be easily monitored, measured and lured away from corrupt officials.

Something never attempted before should be tried in view of all the repeated excesses that arise out of corruption. The supervision of aid should be left in the hands of countries recognised to be as free as possible of that taint. Only a few countries qualify in this enviable category and that includes Singapore, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and last but not least, New Zealand.

It is a shame that there should be so few who can be entrusted to administer the affairs of so many.

* Jaya Prakash lectures in journalism at Beacon School of Technology in Singapore.