[June 13, 2015] Anyone who has not personally witnessed high-levels of corruption and the caustic effects cannot understand the enormous toll it takes on people and organizations. The price of corruption can be huge; destroying lives of the innocent, costing ordinary citizens large portions of their income, and creating mistrust in political and business leaders. The fact that corruption is a constant in life; it is the duty of honest leaders to be vigilant to identify, stop, or prevent it … but this will take a high degree of moral courage.
“They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.” – 2 Peter 2:19 of the Bible
Two recent high profile and potential corruption cases will illustrate such problems. One involves leadership members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s (FIFA). Several of their leaders were allegedly accepting money to influence their decisions about where international competitions and World Cup tournaments would be played and who were allowed to be holders of media and marketing rights.1 While this is mostly about money (and lots of it), money is not always the basis for corruption.
We normally think of corruption cases that involve bribery, extortion, and blackmail, it can also involve favoritism, nepotism, and abuse of discretion. For example, there are currently strong allegations of corruption by U.S. Presidential contender Hillary Clinton. Specifically some are claiming that she sold influence to foreign governments and large private companies that donated to her family’s charitable foundation.
In both of these cases, the charges are allegations and no one has been convicted of any wrongdoing. But it was established long ago that leaders and corruption go together, for it is the leader’s power that provides the means to corruption. A corollary to this is that the greater the power, the greater the potential for corruption and the greater the impact, mostly negative, of the corruption. In the case of the FIFA leadership and Ms Clinton, they wield considerable power and if true the effects can be considerable.
Corruption goes to the heart of the trustworthiness and honesty of leaders. The stain of corruption affects all leaders and those associated with the perpetrator(s). This is why I argue that corruption is a threat to any society because it breaks the relationship ordinary citizens have with their government or organization.
Rules, someone once said, only apply to the powerless. When people begin to believe that all leaders are corrupt, they are more likely themselves to surrender their trust of all leaders. Such a sad state of affairs is a threat to the foundations of any society.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case
[Note] See more theLeaderMaker.com blog entries on “corruption” https://www.theleadermaker.com/the-pig-book-corruption-and-politics/
https://www.theleadermaker.com/venezuela-violence-corruption-failed-leaders/
https://www.theleadermaker.com/political-corruption-and-destroying-trust/
https://www.theleadermaker.com/leader-trends-corrupt/