CORRUPTION has virtually become part of every Papua New Guinean’s daily usage. Almost in every discussion, private or public, you will hear the word being mentioned.
Politicians use it to attack each other; candidates use it to sway votes during election campaign; NGOs use it when they are not satisfied with the Government’s actions or inaction; and even donor countries and international financial institutions use it to justify their interests as well as to gain domestic support.
But do we really know what it means and why it has suddenly become the most celebrated word in PNG? What is it in PNG context?
Recently, Transparency International revealed that its corruption perception index has placed PNG as one of the most corrupted countries in the world.
It is real? Papua New Guineans must know that the corruption perception index on PNG is purely based on perceptions collected mainly from business people and university academics abroad. They are not based on hard facts.
The interesting thing about corruption is that the more Papua New Guineans talk about it, including media coverage, even though with good intentions of reducing it, the perception of PNG’s global corruption status gets worse.
I wonder whether the Transparency International PNG is of any help to the country in negotiating the index since it is based on perception or is it just an agent of external interest.
Even so, how transparent, accountable and responsive is Transparency International in calculating the index?
After all, it is common knowledge that a former World Bank official Peter Eigen and number of fellow travellers – mostly from the private sector and World Bank – formed it in 1993.
No wonder the World Bank is continuously the principal financier of the organisation.
Interestingly most of our developed donor countries insist addressing corruption as one of the principal conditions of their assistance.
Unfortunately, history tells us that donor countries like the United States and Australia were also corrupt by today’s standard in their early stages of development, let alone good governance. PNG is no different after all.

Oa Lavai
Melbourne, Australia