Petty corruption: the plague we seek no cure for

Google the term and the top search result will say it all: “Petty corruption refers to everyday abuse of entrusted power by low- and mid-level public officials in their interactions with ordinary citizens, who often are trying to access basic goods or services in places like hospitals, schools, police departments and other agencies”. The definition is provided by Transparency International, which explains this type of graft mainly vis-à-vis grand corruption. 

In January this year, chief of the Integrity and Anti-Corruption Commission Mohammad Allaf acknowledged that petty corruption was rampant in Jordan and claimed that grand corruption came to an end. Not so many people agreed with the second part of his statement, especially since he gave no explanations, but all seem to have agreed with the first part. 

The international watchdog had one year earlier reported a rise in petty corruption in Jordan, namely bribery, wasta, and other forms of favouratism, although more recent reports have singled out Jordan and a couple of other Arab countries as making “small but positive steps” to eliminate graft. 

But regardless of official statements and international reports, the phenomenon of bribery, in particular, has become not only visible and almost everywhere, but, more alarmingly, accepted as a fact of life. We are not talking about embezzlement and types of administrative corruption that can be easily detected by the Audit Bureau, which is doing a fairly good job, but undetectable cases when a given citizen who has business with a department that provide public services knows very well that things will not be easy unless he or she pays. Again, we are not referring here to people who seek to bribe an official to twist, or completely ignore, the law to serve their interests, but to ordinary law-abiding citizens who believe that legal or not, they have to pay to get their business done. 

One of hundreds of examples is when you are met at the entrance of a government department by someone, who might be an office boy, telling you that he can get your business done hassle-free if you pay and he does if you do. It goes without saying that the money will be split by the employees concerned just for doing what they get their salaries to do.  

The volume of petty corruption worldwide was estimated in 2011 at around $750 million and has been on the rise, but it remains a small figure and it might sound harmless in a small country like Jordan, especially since the money remains within the national economic cycle, meaning that small corrupt officials will spend the ill-gotten cash in the local market, unlike big fishes who tend to smuggle their illegal fortunes abroad. 

Nevertheless, the harm inherent in this situation is far more dangerous. Corruption in general and petty corruption in particular is prone to undermine the already weak public trust in the entire system and encourage more people to practice it when they have power vested in them somewhere else. 

According to the law governing its mandate, the anti-corruption commission is trusted to conduct “the necessary investigations in order to follow up on any of the corruption allegations, whether according to its discretion or based on information it might receive”. With a budget that is little more than JD2 million a year, the agency is not expected to have this colossal mission accomplished, and we will keep helplessly watching petty corruption evolve into an incurable epidemic. 

The writer is the deputy chief editor of The Jordan Times