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Bangkok Post
by Veera Prateepchaikul

The opinion survey which was conducted on 1,228 household respondents in 17 provinces across the country shows that 84.5 percent of them accept corruption as a normal practice in business and 51.2 percent of them admit they don't mind if a government is corrupt so long as it manages to bring about prosperity to the country and to improve the livelihood of the people. Amazing?

Here is some information about the respondents. 31.6 percent of them are in the farming sector, 27 of them entrepreneurs, 15.2 percent of them employees and 11.5 percent government officials. Of these, 75 of them have under-graduate level of education.

Although it is a common knowledge here that corruption is deeply-rooted and widely practised especially in government bureaucracy to the extent it has been accepted as a ``way of life'', the findings are troubling, shocking and a big letdown. One does not need to be an astrologer to make a forecast about the future of this country if most of its people feel that it is OK to have a corrupt government if it can make them eat and sleep well and can make the country move forward.

For heaven’s sake! How can they so naïve that they believe that they can have a corrupt government and still they can live happily and the country will prosper all at the same time? Something must have gone terrily wrong with their mindset. Or something may have gone wrong with the educational system that they have gone through.

I don’t know whether they have ever through recent history and found a country where there was a corrupt government that made its people happy and brought about prosperity and development to the country. I bet they could never find one. The closest example is perhaps Thailand under the Thaksin regime which was alleged to be corruption-prone but managed to win the hearts of the grassroot people with its populist policies and generous handouts. But did the regime really bring about prosperity to the country and improved livelihood to the people?

Many grassroot people might have been duped or corrupted by the populist policies and generous handouts to the extent that they were led to believe that those represented prosperity and better livelihood. Apparently overlooked or blinded were the hefty amount of taxpayers’ money which were siphoned away into the private coffers of the corrupt politicians which should otherwise have been spent for the good of the country and the people. Those handouts were just the leftovers used to buy the loyalty of the impoverished grassroot people.

There is no such thing in the world as a corrupt government and prosperity for the country and happiness for the people at the same time. Examples abound of corrupt government leaders in Third World countries who plundered their own countries to enrich themselves, leaving their peoples in abject poverty and untold sufferings. Many of these governments ended up being overthrown by the people or by a coup and their leaders either killed or forced to seek refuge abroad.

If anything, the Abac Poll findings serve a valuable warning that our perception about corruption needs to be fixed or reversed and that our faulty educational system needs to be closely examined to make sure that it serves to EDUCATE the people at least to enable them to differentiate between right and wrong, good and bad. Otherwise, I don’t see much future for this country.