Letter

Each issue of Pambazuka News I read with great interest, in particular its section on corruption as that is my special field of studies and activities. The issue 127 (The Politics of Corruption) was of special interest because of your editorial. I am not so impressed by the continuity in which some states appear every year at the bottom of corruption lists (and others at the top). In my paper for a conference in Seoul, Korea I criticised the methodology used to establish the list which in my view cannot result otherwise than as it is published every year, whereas if we would use other sources and another methodology, we would reach totally different results. One university professor I met in Seoul, also working on this subject, told me that in his ranking Chile ends up heading the list as the "cleanest" country! Of course, I do no want to belittle the phenomenon as it exists in Africa, but we should be more honest in our research in order to obtain better results and a more trustful ranking of countries than is now presented by the CPI of Transparency International. The chosen methodology is something like a holy cow which cannot be touched let alone be killed.