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Who are you kidding, Mr. Blair British Prime Minister Tony Blair is no fool, far from it. If he is also not a hypocrite, he probably has little respect for the mental capabilities of people even in the West who increasingly believe that poverty and inequality in developing countries are intrinsically linked with global security. 
If Mr Blair
thought that his sugar coated words during the recently concluded
World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in anyway
elevated him to a pantheon of the godly, he must be more naïve
than those he tried to convince of his conversion to righteousness. So now and
then the West makes a few noises that seem to suggest that these
criticisms are being taken on board and genuine thought given to
minimising the havoc that some multinationals have caused in developing
countries when given unbridled power. It was quite
clear long before the summit got under way late last month that
the multinationals and the huge corporations that operate in the
developing countries since globalisation and privatisation became
the latest mantra for economic salvation, would receive considerable
flak for the economic and social problems they have caused. Under pressure
from the American corporate lobby to which President George W. Bush
owes his political ascendancy, he kept away from the summit and
let poor Colin Powell, his secretary of state, bear the brunt of
universal anger and opprobrium. Some call it carrying the white
man's burden. So it was left
to other western leaders such as Tony Blair to try and save the
day for big business that has been quite helpful in the furtherance
of his own political career not to mention the coffers of the Labour
Party that he now leads. Mr Blair has,
of course, fought shoulder-to shoulder with his transatlantic colleague
on a number of fronts such as global terrorism and the need to topple
Saddam Hussein before he releases poisonous gases and pollutes the
atmosphere just as the western industrialised nations have done
for decades. All the same
Mr. Blair was keen to strike a different chord, not wanting to show
the world that he is the lackey of Washington on every issue. So
he stressed once more his support for the Kyoto Treaty on climate
change that requires industrialised countries to cut their gas emissions
by a target date, the treaty that Bush senior agreed to in 1992
in Rio but Bush junior reneged on two years ago. But while talking
of the need to control environmental degradation and eliminate poverty
and other social evils that are abundant in this world, Mr. Blair
threw a curved one, what I suppose cricket writers would call a
googly. On initial
mention it seemed a good idea and that was what Tony Blair was counting
on. He proposed that corporate corruption could be countered by urging companies to publish all payments made to governments of developing countries and their officials. In this way
Blair hopes to prevent illegal payments to politicians and bureaucrats
in developing countries for underhand deals and expects this will
reveal where large sums of money paid for concessions and production
are going. But examine it closely and all the faults begin to appear like warts. Firstly, such a proposal would only apply to British companies and that too would be voluntary. In other words the British prime minister is only appealing to British companies to agree to voluntarily publicising the fact that they have given bribes-okay, made payments-to third world governments or bureaucrats. Now, would any British company in serious competition with others from elsewhere, commit business hara kiri by making such public statements and jeopardise its chances of winning contracts or concessions from any developing country? It is a truism of international business that corporations big and small give incentives to grease the palms of politicians and officials to win business for themselves. Presidents have been given villas, prime ministers have had their Swiss bank accounts bloated and officials have squirreled away dollars. Besides, the proposal seems to target developing countries as though the only crooks are to be found among politicians and bureaucrats among the poor. But Blair blithely ignores the influence of big business on politicians and officials of rich nations. After all he should know the number of scandals that have erupted around him and some of his ministers. Just the other day we read of British ambassadors being warned by the Foreign Office not to involve themselves in recommending companies etc. Though they refuse to admit it, this was an obvious reference to the Lakshmi Mittal case in which Tony Blair himself wrote to the Rumanian president promoting the case of this steel king. When the story broke, Downing Street tried to justify it saying Mr Blair was trying to promote British business. Only later Downing Street discovered its faux pas. Mr Mittal hardly has any British business interests and hardly employs 100 persons here. He is not even a British citizen. But a month or two before Blair wrote the letter of promotion, Mr Mittal had contributed to Labour Party funds. The Berlin-based Transparency International in a recent report labelled France as the most corrupt country in Europe and Italy the next. Corruption, bribe taking and bribe giving are not the monopolies of the developing countries though one dare says they have contributed heavily towards gaining this notoriety. Recent events surrounding one of the energy giants Enron and an internationally-known accountancy firm have shown that fault lines exist everywhere. If bribery and corruption is a scourge that prevents the economic and social development of the poorer countries, then mere appeals to multinationals will not do. Corporate governance must accompany political governance-ethics must apply to both. If there can be international courts to try crimes against humanity, surely they should apply to business as well as politics. Corporate action that reduces people to penury and corrupts society is no different, on the moral scales, from genocide and torture. |
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