Economy, corruption and bill passing

05/09/2021 20:09

• Clarín.com

• Opinion

Updated 05/09/2021 20:09

Javier Zapata Innocenzi says that

one day he got tired

. It was twenty years ago, when outraged by all the complaints that came to light about the then government in his native Peru, he had the idea. With humor, black, and a lot of irony, that's how

“President” was

born

, the board game that allows you to add votes and quickly reach the first magistracy,

accumulating points with cards marked for crimes of corruption

or tricks always at odds with the rule of law. The game was updated over the years and today it is going through another era of splendor, as Peruvians prepare for the duel between the radicalized leftist Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori, accused of serious acts of corruption.

What about Peru is far from being an exception, of course. According to the 2020

Corruption Perception Index report

prepared by

Transparency International

, “the landscape is bleak; the analysis indicates that corruption not only undermines the global health response to Covid-19 but also contributes to maintaining democracy in a state of permanent crisis ”. In this ranking, in which Peru obtained 38 points out of 100 (the lower the score, the more corruption),

Alberto Fernández's

Argentina

obtained 42, lost three compared to the previous year and

fell twelve places in the global ranking

of 180 countries, placing it in the place 78.

According to Pablo Secchi, executive director of Poder Ciudadano -Argentine chapter of Transparency International-,

the lack of clarity in purchases

and contracts to alleviate the pandemic, as well as the attempts to generate modifications both in the Justice and in the Public Prosecutor's Office influenced the score achieved by Argentina.

That fatigue of Zapata and these indicators seem to be replicated in other reports. A Management & Fit survey shows how, in successive measurements in August 2020 and January, February and March 2021,

corruption

ranked

first among the concerns

of Argentines. The index, in March, was 30.6%, followed by inflation, with 22.4%. The corruption scandal with vaccines made that same month 58.9% said they had

little or no confidence

that the national government could implement a

fair and equitable vaccination plan.

Busy in flagging themselves behind

“Juan Domingo Biden

”, neither Alberto Fernández nor Cristina Kirchner seemed to notice, in other words, those of the US president's running mate. Before the beheading of the Supreme Court in El Salvador, Kamala Harris said that "an

independent judiciary

is essential for a healthy democracy" and that "corruption makes

institutions collapse from within

.

"

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had already made his contribution when in the annual report of the Department he criticized "the lack of effective implementation" of the laws to prevent and punish acts of corruption in Argentina and that

"weak institutions and an often ineffective judicial system and politicized

undermined systematic attempts to stop ”the problem.

The fact that corruption appears among the main concerns of Argentines in different polls is, for some analysts, an auspicious fact, which would indicate an important social awareness. Others are somewhat more skeptical. In a note published in May 2016 in The Washington Post, analysts Carlin, Love and Martínez Gallardo wondered why, with corruption not new in Brazil, it had suddenly become a threat to then-President Dilma Rousseff, who she would be removed by the Senate in August. The conclusion of his study was that, in Latin America, the demand for accountability of society to the leaders is highly related to the progress of the economy.

Analyzing

84 presidential regimes in the region

, they concluded that presidential approval ratings were highly sensitive to corruption charges only if the country had high inflation, high unemployment, or both.

When inflation and unemployment rose,

scandals loomed large

and had a greater negative impact on presidential approval ratings.

Hopefully it doesn't take an economic wreck to understand that corruption is a scourge.