by Marco Lopez
BELMOPAN, Thurs. Feb. 23, 2023
When former Prime Minister Rt.Hon. Dean Barrow was the Leader of the Opposition back in 2004, he claimed to have sharpened a doubled-edged machete to cut out corruption in the country. Belize in 2023 has not been on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) since 2008 and is still very much behind globally as it relates to anti-corruption measures. Yesterday, in a press release, the current Briceño administration informed of the government’s pursuit to be ranked once again on Transparency International’s (TI) CPI and admitted that the nation has “fallen short” in the pursuit of implementing key anti-corruption conventions like UNCAC and the OAS Anti-Corruption Convention.
The press release stated that Prime Minister Hon. John Briceño has tasked the Good Governance Unit – who has been in conversation with Transparency International representatives from Latin America and the Caribbean – to continue discussion and partnership with the association and the data source organizations to formally get Belize ranked and listed in the CPI. We were informed this evening by the Public Relations Officer for the Ministry of Public Service, Michelle Rodriguez, that the Good Governance Unit has identified with the help of TI, four (4) data sources.
The Corruption Perception Index for countries is calculated using 13 external sources and requires countries to have at least three of these data sources to be ranked. According to the release from GoB, only two of these sources were available for the country, and as a result, Belize was not ranked in the 2022 CPI.
The government shared however that data from the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicator calculated Belize’s level of Control Corruption at 45. 67% out of 100%. “Indicating that Belize ranks around 47th to 52nd of 180 countries and territories ranked by Transparency International’s CPI,” the release states. We are informed that the only two data sources that disclose data from Belize are the Global Insights Business and Risks Indicator and the World Justice Projects’ Rule of Law Index.
We retrieved some data from “The Rule of Law in Belize: Key Findings from the General Population Poll 2021” report. A document published by the World Justice Project and according to a 2017 audit of the CPI process, is one of the data sources used by Transparency International to calculate the CPI for countries. The ministry’s public relations officer confirmed this was one of the documents used in the 2022 CPI process.
That document, released last year, reveals some harsh truths about governance in Belize. Section 1. 1 starts by pointing out, “Belizeans have more pessimistic views on government accountability than respondents from regional peer countries. Only 22% of Belizean respondents believe that a high-ranking government official would be prosecuted and punished if they were to embezzle public funds for personal benefit, while this figure ranged from 38% to 51% in regional peer countries.”
The report states that the perception of corruption in Belize has improved across all institutions between 2019 and 2021. However, “Belizeans believe that members of the National Assembly are the most corrupt, with half (50%) of respondents reporting that most or all members of the legislative branch are involved in corrupt practices,” the report states.
Police officers are next in line, with 45% of respondents to the survey perceiving officers as involved in corrupt practices. Bribery is reported most prevalent for government permits and documents, “or to obtain a birth certificate or government ID,” the report states.
Less than half of the respondents reported having some or a lot of trust in people living in their community. Only 42% report trusting judges and magistrates, and 40% trusting public defense attorneys.
“Fewer than 40% of Belizeans express at least some trust in national and localgovernment officers and only 35% of Belizeans report trusting police officers. That being said, perceptions of trust across these groups have sustained improvements in Belize since 2017,” the report states.
In this source, Belize received an overall score of 0.48 on a scale on which 1 (strong adherence to the rule of law) is the highest score and 0 (weak adherence to the rule of law) is the lowest. The country’s overall global ranking was 93rd of 139 countries and it received a ranking of 22 among the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. This data from the World Justice Project survey, along with the Global Insights Business and Risks Indicators, would account for just a portion of what is required by Transparency International to list and rank Belize on the CPI.
According to the ministry, the Good Governance Unit has identified V-Dem Institute, the Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk, the International Institute for Management Development, and the World Economic Forum as suitable data sources for Belize.
“The Good Governance Unit has made it one of its strategic actions to work with these four organizations to have Belize ranked and listed in the CPI 2023,” the public relations officer from the ministry informed us.
Other data sources include: African Development Bank Country Policy and
Institutional Assessment 2020, Bertelsmann Stiftung Sustainable Governance Indicators 2022, Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index 2022, Freedom House Nations in Transit 2022, Global Insight Country Risk Ratings, Political and Economics Risk Consultancy Asian Intelligence, The PRS Group International Country Risk Guide, World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment, and World Justice Project Rule of Law Index Expert Survey.