The Kuala Lumpur NAM Summit Final Document should break with tradition
by devoting a special section on war against corruption in the developing
countries as a serious commitment to deliver good governance as a
precondition for new relevance and revitalization of NAM
Media Conference Statement
(2)
- after closing the two-day DAPSY National leadership retreat
by Lim Kit Siang
(Port Dickson,
Sunday): The Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM) Summit should break with tradition by devoting a special section on
war against corruption in the developing countries as a serious commitment
to deliver good governance as a precondition for new relevance and
revitalization of NAM.
All the concerns that have been expressed about the irrelevance of NAM and
how imperative that it be revitalized are meaningless unless the NAM Summit
in Kuala Lumpur is prepared to prove that it is more than a talk-shop, or
worse, a selective talk-shop where important issues to the peoples of the
Third World but embarrassing to the rulers are avoided like the plague.
One such issue is the grave problem of rampant corruption of NAM
governments. The overwhelming majority of the 20 most corrupt countries out
of 102 nations in the 2002 Corruption Perception Index survey of
Transparency International are all members of the NAM.
However, corruption has never featured in any of the documents of NAM
Summits in the past.
The KL NAM Summit Final Document should send out a loud and clear message
that henceforth, corruption would be one of the priority concerns together
with human rights, the rule of law and good governance in the NAM countries-
as otherwise, NAM would lose the moral right to attack the developed nations
for their hegemony, arrogance of power and double standards.
The NAM Summit has the right to reject the Transparency International's
annual Corruption Perception Index as biased and unfair to the Third World,
but it must be prepared to establish a monitoring body of its own to come
out with a NAM Corruption Perception Index on the problem of corruption in
NAM.
Let the 2003 NAM Summit in Kuala Lumpur make history and pioneer a new
chapter by declaring that it would not condone corruption and would be in
the forefront to combat it by establishing a standing mechanism to monitor
the scourge of corruption among the NAM countries.
(23/2/2003)
*
Lim Kit Siang, DAP National
Chairman
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