this corrupt nation : me guilty too

Below is the Editorial from today's edition of The National newspaper. It makes me mad and sad because it's tru and I am guilty too.

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FROM time to time, Papua New Guinean governments have had cause to be highly critical of both the attitudes and the advice of the World Bank. Yesterday, The National published a report from the Bank that analysed corruption in the South Pacific. Papua New Guineans will derive little pleasure from the report. Our country is numbered among the most corrupt in the world.

Our average per head income is only a little above that of people in sub-Saharan Africa, an area that has suffered for decades from vicious civil wars, genocide, prolonged droughts leading to mass starvation and major movements of refugees. PNG by contrast has an embarrassment of natural resources, a number of major investors and at least superficially, a free-speaking and energetic democracy. The report calculated that it would take PNG 20 years of sustained economic growth of 3.3% a year to get average incomes back to the level achieved in 1994, more than 12 years ago.Aid to our country is calculated to be about K125 per person each year, compared with K96 per head in Africa. So the people of our resource-rich, more or less politically stable South Seas democracy receive K125 of their average annual income of some K1,600 per year in the form of aid from other countries and organisations.

The reason for this rampant near poverty is corruption – and before readers point the finger at their leaders, let them be honest with themselves. The PNG level of corruption is one that spreads throughout the community. The World Bank figures would not be possible if our corruption was restricted to a handful of elected politicians. Such endemic and ingrained corruption has come about through the thousands of silent kick-backs, the myriad of small bribes and the other lucrative deals that riddle our society. We are a corrupt society, not a nation where the corruption stems solely from our leaders.

We now think corruptly.

When we analyse a situation, far too many of us do so from the angle of determining what’s in it for us. If we’re approached to carry out a small job for somebody, we set a reward.

No reward, no outcome.

No carton, no driver’s licence.

No couple of thousand kina, no falsely extended work permit.

No massive spin-offs, no contracts to exploit this or that resource.

Pay enough, and your car will be registered in no time. Fail to pay, and it may never be registered – there’s so much that can be found wrong with a vehicle.

K50 or K100 in the holiday season ensures that your name is moved from the wait-list to the status of confirmed passenger.

K100 will make sure that your bag of cannabis exits from the air terminal or the wharf without interference from officials.

Equal amounts will guarantee your child enters high school, or becomes captain of the school soccer team.

A few crisp notes will save your bacon if you’re stopped by a cop for swigging beer while you drive.

As for that block of land you’ve had your eyes on for years, you only have to blame yourself if it lands up in somebody else’s hands. You should long ago have bribed the appropriate land authorities, then purchased the block for a fraction of its value. Once it’s yours, you can throw up that ill-built nightclub you’ve always wanted. You’ll only have to pay another thousand or so to inspectors or a building board to get away with no fire provisions, and don’t forget the bribe to get your grog and public entertainment licence. Once that’s all taken care of, you’ve got a brand new business that’s a licence to print money, a good old-fashioned cash cow that’s all yours to milk.

So let’s not adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, and blame the big time operators who try to get away with millions. Chances are, they’ll get caught. But us small operators – no way. We can go on coining a dishonest buck indefinitely – or at least until the World Bank and this country’s long-suffering donors finally pull the plug on PNG. The task is a huge one. It’s time we turned the finger back to point at ourselves.

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So what does ricebag do? To tell you the truth. When something bureacratic actually gets done for me (which sometimes feels like nothing short of a miracle or an amazing event, or both), I fall just short of singing for joy and a feeling of insane gratitude overwhelms me and I just feel that I HAVE to reward someone. It's insane and wrong because someone is 'just' doing their job when they process that form or that bill or that passport - but I know they could just as easily not have given a rats arse and left me high and dry. Of course - when someone expects gratuity in exchange for just doing their job - I don't pay unless there would be no other way.

It's not like that in every single situation, but it is more often than not. Every day we justify paying that little "extra" by saying that person who 'helped' us doesn't make crumbs in that crappy-assed job. Truth is sometimes paying the 'extra' is fair in a weird, evening-out-the-universe way, but other times its could be insulting and unnescessary - you need to be able to know when to tell the difference.

So yeah - I am 'surviving' here and learning how it goes. Just today I got stopped by the police for my busted tail light on my car. Someone I know from Enga is a cop and when he saw me he ran over and saved my butt (for the 2nd time in the last 2 months for the same taillight) and saved me from getting a ticket - so I gave him some "smuk moni" - just K5. But I know it saved me K20.

So I am part of it too I guess. Pointing my finger right back at me.