If a tree falls, does the World
Bank hear it? By Marwaan
Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - For all its talk of
good governance, the World Bank continues to
choose its words carefully when reprimanding
errant states in which it has big stakes. What is
happening in Cambodia is typical.
Over the
weekend, the bank's new president, Robert
Zoellick, uttered the customary warnings that his
predecessors have done regarding rampant graft in
the Southeast Asian country. Phnom Penh should
"counter the challenge of corruption", Zoellick told
reporters on Sunday at the
end of his two-day visit.
His talks with
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen had touched on
the widespread illegal logging networks that have
come to symbolize the web of corruption across the
impoverished nation. Hun Sen had admitted that
there was "a need to stop the logging operations",
Zoellick said at the press conference.
This visit was the first to a developing
country since Zoellick, a former US deputy
secretary of state and a former US trade
representative, became the chief of the World
Bank. He replaced Paul Wolfowitz, who stepped down
on June 30.
That mild tone against
corruption in Cambodia was also mirrored in the
formal press statement issued by the bank at the
end of Zoellick's visit. The need to fight
corruption received passing mention in a
three-page Phnom Penh-datelined statement that
touched, for the most part, on the other major
interests of the bank. The list includes the
bank's role in supporting microfinance schemes,
help in issuing land titles, coordinating aid, and
shaping the country's development agenda.
"The World Bank wants to assist the
[Cambodian] government to enact reforms to reduce
rural poverty, encourage social development,
improve the business and investment climate, and
strengthen the rule of law," Zoellick said. "These
next, essential steps would help the government
earn the respect of entrepreneurs and investors
and, more importantly, the appreciation of
Cambodians, who have suffered much and seek the
full benefits of peace, growth and opportunity."
These words help to gloss over a prospect
looming in the distance that could be damaging to
senior government officials with hands soiled by
corrupt deals. Early last month, the US Senate
urged the administration of President George W
Bush in a draft bill to impose travel bans on
Cambodian officials named in a recent report on
the country's illegal logging network.
"If
implemented, the proposed US ban would [prohibit]
senior Cambodian ministers, top-ranking generals
and others" from entering the US, stated Global
Witness, a London-based environmental lobby, which
produced the report "Cambodia's Family Trees -
Illegal Logging and the Stripping of Public Assets
by Cambodia's Elite". "It also wants other Western
and Asian countries to impose similar
restrictions," Global Witness wrote.
The
Senate is acting on the Kleptocracy Initiative
that was launched by Bush last year to combat
high-level corruption, said Simon Taylor, a
director at Global Witness. "The initiative aims
to shut out high-level corrupt officials from the
global financial system, deny them a safe haven,
and recover and return proceeds of their crimes.
"Our report presents strong evidence that
corruption and nepotism by high-ranking officials
in the Cambodian government [have] facilitated
extensive illegal logging in Cambodia; and that
their involvement has undermined the rule of law,
democracy and sustainable development," Taylor
said in an e-mail interview. "The activities of
these officials fall within the remit of the
Kleptocracy Initiative, and they can be denied
safe haven in the United States."
On the
eve of Zoellick's visit to Cambodia, Global
Witness urged the World Bank's new chief to use
his days in Phnom Penh to "set the tone for his
presidency and lay the foundations for the bank's
approach to kleptocratic governments". That would
be a shift from "the bank and most other
international donors [having] so far made little
effort to call the [Cambodian] government to
account on the issue" of illegal logging.
"[The] inaction by the donor community is
symptomatic of its long-standing failure to ensure
that aid strengthens governance," said Taylor.
"The donor-Cambodian-government relationship has
descended into a farcical exchange of money for
empty promises, which confers legitimacy on those
same officials who are looting the country."
It is a view echoed by Transparency
International. In its 2006 corruption survey for
the Asia-Pacific region, the Berlin-based global
anti-graft watchdog described Cambodia as among
those with "the highest perception of corruption".
The country stands out for "the lack of political
will to strengthen anti-corruption institutions",
consequently perpetuating "rampant corruption" and
"undermining improvements in quality of life for
the poorest citizens".
Last year, the
non-governmental Transparency International ranked
Cambodia 151 among 163 countries surveyed for
corruption, where the country that topped the list
was the least corrupt.
The Global Witness
report, released in early June, claimed that the
dominant logging syndicates in Cambodia were
"controlled by individuals related to Prime
Minister Hun Sen, Minister for Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries Chan Sarun, and Director
General of the Forest Administration Ty Sokhun".
The annual timber haul from illegal
logging was estimated to be more than US$13
million, "Cambodia's Family Trees" noted.
Consequently, 30% of the country's forest cover
has been wiped off over a five-year period, it
said. "Illegal logging in Cambodia not only fills
the pockets of the political elite; it also funds
the activities of a 6,000-strong private army
controlled by Hun Sen."
More than 35% of
Cambodia's 13.3 million people live in poverty, on
less than $1 a day. The World Bank is among a
group of aid donors that help the country, pumping
in financial assistance that accounts for close to
half of the country's national budget. In June,
the donors pledged $689 million.
It was
only last year that the bank responded to
corruption, freezing $7.6 million for three
projects it was funding, including a water-supply
and sanitation scheme.
But that was a
departure from the norm since the bank stepped in
to shape Cambodia's development agenda after a
peace accord in the early 1990s brought to an end
decades a bloody conflict.
"The World Bank
cannot afford to crack the whip on corruption in
Cambodia, because it has too much to lose," said
Shalmali Guttal, a senior researcher at Focus on
the Global South, a Bangkok-based regional
think-tank.
"Corruption is deeply
entrenched in Cambodia, and so is it within the
development system and the aid industry," she
said. "The World Bank has been in charge of this
development model. It has held it up as a
post-conflict-reconstruction country."
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