Opinion
Argentine Customs
Beatriz Sarlo
Argentine Customs
Beatriz Sarlo
Corruption does not matter to anyone, a friend tells me. The thousands of inches and broadcast minutes printed for the issue would be justified in at least one of the following two reasons: corruption is a story that people follow with interest, or those endless news finally come to interest readers and viewers. But
if my friend is right, chimangos spent gunpowder, not only because a shortage of judges and prosecutors who dare to corruption, but also because many Argentines are more or less indifferent, though not explicitly say so because it would be cynicism that few are willing to practice openly.
democracy appears as a system that provides opportunities for crime by the government and does not ensure the punishment of those who take advantage. But dictatorships have also proved corrupt regimes. Exceptional arrangements, such as Fujimori in Peru, showed less but more corruption than others, and speed of new democracies popular or peasant were quickly colonized by a state that practiced corruption so pyramid and an order that all subordinates must respect.
By the way, is no guarantee of least corrupt governments to be occupied by elites who already have wealth when they reach the state, nor is it a guarantee that both men come from below, in long struggles, finally arriving to power.
What I just described would be a universal and inevitable system against which, as is the nature of things, you could not do anything. However, there are countries where corruption is frowned upon by the political class as a whole. No need to go far: Uruguay and Chile provide examples nearby. I remember some years ago, Chilean newspapers read the scandal for a lawmaker who had been left with a sum that Argentina would be considered free to use (a "back", we would say with unabashed sincerity). Public opinion strongly condemned by some British MPs expenses here would be lightly considered part of their prerogatives, and a few days ago a minister in the new government had to resign because he had used an assignment of rents to pass to your partner, like a tenant .
surface is skeptical and a society that makes them pay the consequences of their political acts have been denounced as corrupt. Has the passion with Chimento, consumes it as if it were news of celebrities have appeared in magazines, in which either makes them pay with their prestige the discovery that imported cars have so blatantly illegal. The celebrities, including fatal attractions, have to be transgressive. But it loves celebrities and politicians, no. There is a willingness to believe anything from anyone, and therefore to say the worst of anti-phrases: "all are corrupt." True
policy issues are neutralized by indifference. No one becomes less alert to corruption due to lack of data because the data are plentiful. The issue goes through the experience of punishment: the corrupt without punishment are an example so persuasive as those who do not pay taxes and are housed in niches where it finally passes sanitation truck to pick up some moratorium.
In countries where the transgressions are severely punished, corruption or tax evasion, as well as moral sanctions, they run the risk of criminal prosecution. These crimes are not treated as a case of disorderly conduct in the last year of high school.
When the penalty is stiff and has a better moral ground to plant his speech: It is known that have to commit a crime because it is wrong, but also because there is the appropriate punishment to the crime. Outside this system of crime and punishment, public ethics is devoid of performative force.
But perhaps more important than this is the fact that corruption is hard to turn into something politically significant. Who was close to doing so was Carlos Alvarez. In 2000, he resigned the vice presidency of the Republic when the scandal broke to buy senators. That act was politicized corruption ", ie that showed not only a moral but also as the most destructive weapon used on the Congress. The road then followed Alvarez did not insist on this line, but his resignation had an educational value, although short-acting. Politicizing
corruption is subtracted from the spot where now the sample: that of an anomaly that is forgotten to be replaced by another, and so on, a corrupt evicted the corrupt morning yesterday, confirming the anti-political bias expressed by the phrase obtusa "everybody is corrupt."
majestic
The case of marriage enrichment Kirchner, who was so quickly considered unimpeachable by an accommodating judge, should be better explained not only in the details of a property investment lucky.
democracy expands opportunities for many people in other schemes would not be in government. This is optimal. Quantitatively but also expands the universe of people who will be subject to all the opportunities that are in power or close to it.
This inequality between representatives and represented is always dangerous, because the representative knows before the principal can be drawn where a slice. Moreover, the representative is more likely that the speech represented invented to justify their actions. The most common today is the cost of the policy. The parties need private funders who are rewarded with government contracts. This has happened not only in Argentina. Somehow
spreads the idea that only someone very rich can pay for an election campaign and, then, competition is trapped between the wealthy and the corrupt (if not from the merger of these two figures in the same man.) Kirchner needs to get rich because his political future happens to have the means to continue on the stage even when he loses the election.
Moreover, citizens can think without malice aware that many would not let an opportunity slip as generous as that offered the Kirchner to expand its capital. Do not lawful and legitimate business with the state is a tradition in Argentina. By continuing, Kirchner meets a dream and adheres to a custom. The growth of a fortune beyond rates that are plausible means to have jumped on the opportunity, unawares, one might think that this is not robbed nobody, as if any crime of corruption is reduced to the figure of theft.
Grey areas abound and are those in which it is more difficult to establish a trial if it is not very clear about the separation between public and private.
predation public is not an activity that is practiced only by politicians. Environmental crime, to take one example, there are thefts but depredations as obvious as that uses a public watercourse to poison with private industrial waste.
The other corruption, directly political, is what happens to the discretionary use of public funds. When some social organizations claim that subsidies are not handled by the local authorities are central to a strategy of electoral loyalties confuses the means to achieve them.
Leaving aside the possibility that these mayors from the acts of corruption that directly promote what they do is to use funds that do not belong to them, administering them in your favor or the great leader that wins. The inherently corrupt nature of this move has less to do with the political use Social funds as with personal enrichment opportunities for municipal leaders are responsible for the diversion. Back on these cases is politicizing the corruption, because these maneuvers affect publicly funded citizenship rights.
is obvious that, without losing the focus of a moralization of politics, what seems needed is a continuous politicization of the discourse on corruption.
This means, remove it from the moral sphere and define it as long as a political issue, and that makes possible the exercise of power always explain it in political terms, even when it seems to respond to personal wanderings; distance of Any which states that all were, are and will be well, noted the private use of public transgressions to destroy the political and social life and the very functioning of the economy, challenging the idea that it is possible to exercise power corruptly and while effective, democratic and popular. Preclude the equation, at the time, Menem benefited: they are corrupt but govern. Simply, if not corrupt rule should govern and if not to be corrupt.
Source: Review - Argentine Customs, by Beatriz Sarlo - The Nation - 06/10/1910
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