by Max McGuinness
Corruption is wrong. But a little corruption never hurt anyone. Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is one of the 20th Century’s outstanding statesmen. He unified his country and created the Euro – both at great short-run economic cost – for the greater political good. Along the way, he presided over illegal payments to his Christian Democratic Union worth at least $20 million. Kohl denies benefiting personally from these monies and most believe him. He used the money to fund election campaigns and to buy support within his party. Persuading Germans to abandon the Deutschmark was difficult enough; without these sweeteners the single currency might never have seen the light of day.
Corruption is wrong. But a little corruption never hurt anyone. Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is one of the 20th Century’s outstanding statesmen. He unified his country and created the Euro – both at great short-run economic cost – for the greater political good. Along the way, he presided over illegal payments to his Christian Democratic Union worth at least $20 million. Kohl denies benefiting personally from these monies and most believe him. He used the money to fund election campaigns and to buy support within his party. Persuading Germans to abandon the Deutschmark was difficult enough; without these sweeteners the single currency might never have seen the light of day.
Austrian politicians have long been among the most corrupt in Europe. As a result of the country’s more or less permanent post-war ‘grand coalition’ between Christian and Social Democrats, both major parties have feathered their nests with impunity. Yet Austria is one of Europe’s most prosperous, stable and well-run states.
Across the border in Italy, the country is suffering from a deep malaise stemming from decades of systemic corruption. Having beaten off countless indictments, Silvio Berlusconi, the man the Economist says is still “unfit to rule”, is back in power for the third time. The city of Naples groans under a catastrophic rubbish crisis attributable to the corrupt disposal of toxic waste in a Mafia-controlled system. Whereas in Britain, the ‘Winter of Discontent’ lasted a couple of months, Naples is facing perhaps tens of thousands of additional cancer deaths for decades to come.
In Africa, an endless succession of corrupt rulers have beggared their countries, siphoning billions into Swiss bank accounts. If it were not for Omar Bongo, dictator of tiny, oil-rich Gabon since 1967, his country could well be as rich as Luxembourg. Instead, average life expectancy is 53 years at birth and 70 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line; Bongo owns 33 properties in France alone, according to a recent criminal investigation.
Where, then, are we to draw the line?
Corruption can wreck societies, but in many cases its effects are relatively benign. Kohl used a few million in illicit splodge to grease the wheels of the transformation of Europe. The biggest kickbacks were orchestrated by his friend, French President François Mitterand, through the nationalised oil company Elf Aquitaine. To complicate the picture further, Elf was the source of much of Bongo’s fortune too. The same slush fund thus enabled unity in Europe and misrule in Africa.
A similar ambiguity characterises Bertie’s demise. Bertie was wrong to take cash from businessmen, wrong to lie about it, wrong to buy a house for his girlfriend’s aunt with party money, and wrong to let his former secretary carry the can. The argument that different standards applied all of 15 years ago is wrong too – Bertie’s main shortcoming was his repeated mendacity over the past year.
But does it really matter? The sums involved, though hardly trivial, were not extravagant and were not stolen from public funds. Colm Keena has calculated in the Irish Times that the Tribunal is investigating transactions through Bertie’s accounts totalling £452,800 before inflation; Haughey pocketed at least £9 million (over €30 million today), and even ‘Garret the Good’ had some £140,000 in debts written off by AIB after borrowing to fund the noble pursuit of financial speculation. No evidence has been produced that Bertie granted favours in exchange for money (unlike Haughey, who got Ben Dunne a big reduction on his tax bill – or Ray Burke or Liam Lawlor).
In sum, if this was corruption, it’s the kind of corruption we can probably live with.
The trouble is that Bertie lacked what the philosopher Bernard Williams called moral luck – he was found out, and that altered the equation entirely. His financial shenanigans were transgressions of little national importance for as long as they remained secret. There were no losers from the ‘dig-outs’ and Bertie got a new house. But once the facts began to emerge and he started stuttering out lie after lie, Bertie had to go. If a politician is known to be corrupt, then he has to resign. Otherwise, corruption would be legitimised and we would go from an Austrian-type problem to an Italian one. There lies the paradox: small-scale corruption, limited to the occasional kickback, is inconsequential. Yet once this becomes public, punishment become essential to deter others from engaging in corruption. Guilt is a function of getting caught.
Helmut Kohl’s moral luck held for as long as it needed to. By the time he was caught in 1999, he had already left office, having fulfilled his major political ambitions. Kohl pressed corruption into the service of virtue, using cash to bypass the narrow-mindedness of smaller men. His corruption was arguably in the national, indeed global interest. For this, he is entitled to sympathy, even respect. Bertie deserves no such accolade. His two-bit hucksterism served no higher purpose than to make his life slightly more comfortable. A great politician, he was a mediocre ruler who squandered the billions from an inherited boom. He helped bring peace to Northern Ireland but so did every other Taoiseach in living memory, with the exception of Haughey. We should exaggerate neither Bertie’s achievements nor his failings. He bungled the trains, roads, hospitals and schools and took a few extra quid for himself. The money was no big deal but, after Burke, Haughey, Lawlor, Lowry, and Redmond, there was no alternative to making an example out of Bertie.
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