"When you ask what works best to tackle corruption and stop rich elites stealing from public coffers, the most common answer is - there must be Political Leadership."
"But for it to have impact, it must come at the national level. There Bangladesh has failed. The losers are its citizens, cut off from the capital and living on 2 dollars a day."
- Stella Dawson, Thomson Reuters Foundation Correspondent
Every week, Thomson Reuters Foundation correspondents offer distilled insight on pressing issues. Two-Minute Talking Points bring you concise commentary from the front lines of humanitarian crises, climate change, corruption and human rights.
When you ask what works best to tackle corruption, the most common answer is Political Leadership. Let’s have a look at the Padma Bridge Project in Bangladesh.
This is built as a game changer, something to lift up Bangladesh into the middle-income ranks of countries. The four miles of road and would connect one of Bangladesh’s poorest south regions to the capital and city ports.
And the World Bank said it found “credible evidence” of corruption the reached high into the government. Heads have rolled at a Canadian firm, and Bangladesh set up a special inquiry.
Then the Bangladeshi government this month halted the funding completely from the World Bank it pulled out. An independent commission was about to report back when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasani made the decision.
So why snub the World Bank, turn her back on over $1 billion in interest-free loans and scare away lenders from Manila, Tokyo and Jedda? Who was she protecting, cronyising her own government, at the cost of the citizens? Many of them live in poverty, 31 percent of them.
Often it is the World Bank that is to be criticized going soft on graft. It has to weigh the promise of development against the cost of corruption. But Bangladeshi leaders they made a different calculation. The losers of this are the Bangladeshi citizens, who live on two dollars a day.
Filming: Claudine Boeglin
Editing: Shanshan Chen
Design: Ye Li
