Insidious Normative Corruption

Insidious Normative Corruption

We walk past it mutely, signaling our tacit acquiescence. The perpetrators of corruption are not visibly embarrassed by detection. They are no longer given reflective pause by the memes of yesteryear, such as Jiminy Cricket exhorting us to “always let your conscience be your guide”. Government administration has become an ethics free zone. Undeterred by media criticism, emboldened by public indifference, political corruption is now a journey rather a series of random episodes. We have, collectively, normalized deviancy in public administration.

The cancer coursing through the body politic is now in stage 4. Corruption as interference in due process breeds powerlessness. Whether earnestly addressing objective criteria for selection under a sham merit principle, or conscientiously attending to exhaustive criteria for a community grant, fair consideration is denied. The message conveyed is that you need an angle, a critical influencer.

It is now naïve to believe in democracy, so eroded is our faith in its operations. We must say no, blatant as well as covert corruption, is unacceptable. The antidote to systemic corruption is not simply the turn of the electoral cycle. There must be other ways to communicate to a sitting government that we find its custodianship on our behalf to be inadequate. Politicians, alone among citizens, expect praise when their malfeasance is deemed not illegal. We deserve and should expect better.