The Maldives has again failed to appear on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) after the anti-corruption organisation was unable to secure the minimum required information necessary.
“We didn’t make the index as the required minimum of three sources of information was not received by TI,” explained Transparency Maldives’ Advocacy and Communications Manager Aiman Rasheed.
The CPI scores are base on a minimum of three expert sources – usually from international organisations with expertise in governance of business climate analysis. Examples include the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Global Insight, or the Asian Development Bank.
Transparency International was only able to obtain information from two sources for this year’s list.
Asked if he thought the absence of the Maldives from the CPI for a second year would have a negative impact on perceptions of the country, Rasheed was dubious.
“My honest opinion is that it can hardly get any worse, we’re already in the bottom of the pile. The developments in 2012 and 2013 do not appear to have improved the public sector in terms of reducing corruption and empowering those who fight corruption,” he said.
He did admit, however, that the Maldives failing to appear on the index for two straight years would raise questions, though he stressed that multiple organisations involved in the collection and analysis of the required data made the assignation of blame to individual bodies unhelpful.
“The problem is that Maldives is a small country and the interactions of international institutions – from which the data is derived – may be limited, as well as the required information may not have been obtained in time, or the data that eventually do come through may not be utilized due to data quality,” continued Rasheed.
After moving up to 134th (of 182 listed states) in the 2011 index, the Maldives did not appear on the 2012 list.
Following the Maldives 2011 appearance in the list, Rasheed described the corruption in the Maldives as “grand corruption” when compared to smaller lever problems elsewhere in the region.
“In the Maldives there is corruption across the judiciary, parliament and members of the executive, all of it interlinked, and a systemic failure of the systems in place to address this. That why we score so low.”
The interference of the judiciary in this year’s presidential elections was roundly criticised internationally after the initial poll was annulled following a questionable Supreme Court ruling regarding fraudulent votes.
This year’s lists consists of just 175 states, with Denmark , Finland and New Zealand taking the top spots for the third year running.
The two positions at the bottom of the table were again occupied by North Korea and Somalia, again for the third consecutive year.
The CPI measures perceived levels of public sector corruption across the globe and is the most widely used indicator of corruption used worldwide.
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