Portugal continues to decline in the Corruption Perceptions Index which for 10 consecutive years has made saddening reading as a widening elite continue to fill their pockets at the expense of others. The country came 33rd of 177 countries in the survey, down one point despite its lip service to anti-corruption laws.
The Vice-president of Transparency and Integrity considers the national score "dramatic" indicating the seriousness of the problem in Portuguese politics and in its public administration.
If the current ranking is rated as serious, the trend is disastrous if Portugal wants to be taken seriously within Europe. The slow decline since 2000 when Portugal was 23rd in the index shows successive governments’ inability or unwillingness to instill in its ranks a moral rigor that it expects of its taxpayers.
The leadership can no longer be taken seriously by an electorate with 8 in 10 believe corruption has increased since the last survey.
"In the last decade the country in the world that has depreciated most in terms of transparency has been Portugal," according to the vice-president of the association who noted that that corruption has been booming in Portugal's government citing the examples of Expo ‘98, Euro 2004, the current submarines case, Portuguese Business Bank (BPN) and Banco Privado Portuguese (BPP). The behaviour of cash rich Angola is clearly encouraged and Portugal "continues to be the preferred laundry" of the Angolan elite.
Portugal’s public administration fosters corruption and the clear inability of the Portuguese justice system to resolving cases of corruption and related crimes, either through lack of means or lack of will, were other aspects that showed Portugal is failing even to bother recovering the money that has been stolen from the state itself.
Portugal is criticised for signing all the anti-corruption conventions (UN, OECD and others), but then ignores them, and fails to create specialised structures to combat corruption, or to protect whistleblowers.
Portugal’s parliament shows no willingness at all to adopt a new version of the Illicit Enrichment Law, the first version of which was rejected by the Constitutional Court. The the state sits on such legislation and remains inactive, like a hen sitting on an egg, warm and happy.
Within the European Union, Portugal is in 14th place, lying above such paragons as Poland, Spain, Italy, Greece and most of the eastern bloc members.
The Danes are number one in Europe for cleanliness, as ever, with an inbred abhorrence of corrupt practices which are seen as anti-social, anti-society and therefore anti-Danish.
Portugal takes the opposite viewpoint and encourages self-enrichment through corrupt practices by leaving unpunished those that are guilty, not recovering assets gained through corrupt practices and generally being unwilling to start at the top where corruption starts.
Portugal expects more from its elected leaders. Corruption starts in the ranks of those who govern and, if they remain unpunished, soon permeates through society and becomes the norm. This is what has happened, the system appears now to be rotten through and through.
