Have you ever heard of a country called Kyrgyzstan? I hadn’t till today. I’m sorry, after Somalia last week, I really don’t want this column to sound like The Geography Lesson On Sunday. But I was browsing the UNICEF website and I came across a series of incredibly insightful blog posts by an Italian chap called Lucio Sarandrea, a representative of the United Nations in… Kyrgyzstan.
Obviously back to the globe I went, spinning it round and round. However, when you have no vague idea where a country is, it’s like trying to find a needle in my sewing basket (alas, where do they go?). Eventually I got out the trusty Phillips Atlas.
It’s a baby state, independent since 1991 – prior to prestroika, they were part of Russia. Apart from China (ah, a familiar place), Kyrgyzstan is surrounded by the rest of the -stan gang: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The people, who speak Kirghiz, are the second most poor in Europe. And the main reason for their poverty is, kutulbostuk, kutulbostuk (Kirghiz for, surprise, surprise) – corruption.
Anyway, this Sarandrea was posted in Kyrgyzstan four years ago as a United Nations adviser on Rule of Law. Needless to say, he’s kept very busy, “supporting and advising” the government (read as “taking the horse to water, etc.”) on improving the rule of law situation in the country so as to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people.
Instead of banging his head against the wall, which is what I would do in his position, Sarandrea is investing the bulk of his time with children, the new Kyrgyz generation. Week in week out, he visits schools and talks to children about the work of the United Nations and gets their feedback on social issues.
One of the topics he discusses in classrooms is corruption and the damage it causes to society. Now, as every parent will know, this is no easy task. Corruption is a very abstract concept for adults, let alone children, to grasp.
But Sarandrea has cracked a cool approach. “How would you feel if a classmate pays the teacher to get higher grades in the exams?” he asks the students.
All the children lift their hands up, indignant. “That’s not fair!”; “That’s not right!”; “I won’t obey the teacher ever again!”. Some students, he writes in his blog posts, can be even more perceptive: “If this student pays to get good exams, then he won’t be studying and he will become stupid”; “What will happen when the year is over, will he pay the new teacher?”; “He cannot buy everyone and sooner or later you will be caught and kicked out from the school”.
Lesson Number One learnt.
What would you do with an extra €1,600? If you were the Prime Minister you could get yourself a couple more tattoos
Then he asks the children to come up with ideas on how such a thing can be prevented.
“I was given the most advanced theories to prevent corruption,” he writes, listing children’s ideas: the school must employ good teachers who would say no to the student; the teachers should be paid well so they won’t be tempted by the money; there has to be a system where homework and grades could be seen by all students, so everyone knows the marking is fair.
Lesson Number Two learnt.
Sarandrea then asks the children what they would do if they had an extra €100 in their pockets. The children scramble to come up with ideas. One says he’d fill the refrigerator with ice-cream and eat them all year long; another one says she’d buy a sofa only for herself so she doesn’t have to share it with her brother. Another one says he’d get a television for his grandmother who gets a pension of only €20 a month.
After the children exhaust all sorts of creative ideas, Sarandrea explains to them how corruption costs the staggering amount of €700 million every year to Kyrgyz citizens. Divided by the number of population, that’s €100 being taken away from each citizen.
Therefore, corruption doesn’t make you smarter, or richer, he tells the kids. “Actually, it makes you poorer. It destroys society and creates a game where there are only losers – with some better cheaters and temporary winners.”
As he leaves the class, a nine-year-old boy goes up to him and tells him that he’s going tell this story to his grandmother. “I hope she won’t be terribly upset that somebody has stolen her the money for her TV!”
Lesson Number Three learnt.
Standing ovation to Sarandrea for coming up with this simple, yet ingenious way to instil in children the idea of common good. It really sets you thinking. In fact, I bet you’re wondering, at this point, how much corruption costs us Maltese taxpayers.
Well, it costs us so much that one politician had described it as “a tax that Maltese and Gozitan families have to make good for.”
That politician was none other than Joseph Muscat, back in the day when he was still Leader of the Opposition. The minute he became Prime Minister, kutulbostuk, kutulbostuk, he was beset by sudden amnesia and partial blindness to his Cabinet best mates’ frolics with corruption.
Thanks to temporary winners Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, corruption costs us Maltese citizens €725 million every year. (For the record, Simon Busuttil did not invent this – it’s an official study published by the European Greens).
If we had to divide €725 million by the population number, it would mean that corruption is snatching away a whopping extra €1,600 in each of our pockets every year. That’s more than a month’s salary for some of us.
What would you do with an extra €1,600? If you’re the Prime Minister you could get yourself a couple more tattoos. If you’re in hospital, it could get you some life-saving medicine. If you’re a pensioner it would give you a well-deserved break from worrying about the cost of living. If you’re me, it would go towards school and living expenses.
Although I should probably buy a huge wall map, so I don’t have to squint every time I discover a new, kutulbostuk country.
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