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Hughes: Graft can be controlled
THE sustained erosion of traditional codes of ethics and the collapse of
traditional safeguards in countries of the Pacific islands has permitted
all forms of corruption to rise to uncontrollable levels, but this can
be controlled by the kind of information that the media gives to the
people.
This challenge was issued by former governor of the Central Bank of the
Solomon Islands Tony Hughes to journalists from the Pacific region at
the fourth bi-annual Pina convention in Honiara.
Mr Hughes said monetisation of economic activity had facilitated trade
and economic speculation but it has undermined traditional safeguards
when wealth comprised physical assets and local obligations.
He said there was a degree of official corruption that was common place
in the region.
“Several countries, including Solomons politicians and civil servants up
to the highest levels of government, have become used to enriching
themselves by improper use of their official powers, in fact putting
themselves up for sale,” Mr Hughes said.
“Corruption thrives because of the collapse of two value systems and the
sanctions that would enforce them, the liberal capitalist system that
encourages individual ambition, enterprise and accumulation of wealth,
but which also licensed greed and excessive consumption of resources,
operated alongside and intertwined with traditional systems of
production and distribution based on maintenance of a ‘dynamic
equilibrium’ in personal and tribal relationships.”
He said the checks and sanctions of both old and the new systems were
clearly failing to keep leaders and their cronies honest.
The visible accountability that kept big men honest when wealth
consisted of yams, mats and pigs that needed to be openly redistributed
or consumed, before they rotted or died, no longer works.
“Money is easily hidden, accumulated and moved around. Electronic
banking around the world is the playground of confidence tricksters,
corrupt politicians and their cronies and we in the Pacific are well
represented,” he said.
Mr Hughes challenged Pina to design training programmes for journalists
that put them through economics and investigative training to enable
their complete knowledge and understanding of the issues that are
driving our economic development backward and risking our communities to
shrink back into the stone-age.
 
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