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- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
African corruption is not breaking news. I am surprised this has been allowed to go on for so long. Multiple pages of this.
broadsword
Brigadier
Nah, far from enough. I'm talking about the kind that brings them down really low. Like Argentina.
broadsword
Brigadier
All this would not have started if someone did not blare out, with a hot mic, that corruption is helpful to the Africans. Just STFU!
Just like how you're free to disagree with us here, you should not be telling others to stfu or else the same will be done to you. Chill out and we can just drop this.
That isn't what you said. What you did say was that "Only when society has reached a certain level of development can we begin to tackle corruption."
You seem to believe that growth must come first before corruption can be fought successfully. But Singapore proves you wrong: Lee Kwan Yew tackled corruption almost the instant he became Prime Minister in 1959; he did not wait for Singapore to grow before he acted against the rot. When Lee began, the island was one of the poorest countries in the world. Now it is one of the richest. It is an existence proof that corruption can be fought successfully before a country develops.
That seems extremely black and white. How about culture, population size, how far cities are away from each other, the level of national security, etc? Those play a huge role in how a country develops.
I want to bring an outside example for this. Let's look at Covid and how it was handled within the first three months it hit China last year, specifically how China immediately build a hospital within 8 days and the total lockdown of cities. China has shown an almost perfect step-by-step method of containing the virus so that anybody should be able to do it especially the number one superpower and other nearby Asian countries then correct? Well, how did that turn out?
In this case, we have to ask the question. "does Africa have the capabilities to do such a thing?". Clearly not because Singapore is exceptional, not the norm. It is unrealistic to put Africa and its people under our standards just as the same could be said about the US and other western countries. We can try to push the corruption-free deals but understand that it will not always work because at the end of the day if they say no to us then we can't force it.
Yes, Singapore was quite corrupt at one time. In fact, in 1959 when Lee Kwan Yew became the Prime Minister for the first time, he ran on an anti-corruption platform. Once elected, he acted almost instantly against the rot; he did not wait for the island to get rich first. We see the results today: from being one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world when Lee started, to one of the richest and least corrupt. The fight against corruption came first, before the economic development of the island.
@solarz would have us believe that development precedes successful anti-corruption drives. But Singapore disproves this.
Singapore was only able to do this because of Lee Kwan. In some sense, he's like the Mao and Xi to China. All the positive changes that happened to both countries seem to be only possible if it had a strong leader. That's something I don't think you can really control in a foreign country. Unless you want to go the American route and install a puppet but that's literally imperialism.