Transparency’s barometer: Caribbean under pressure?

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – Corruption: it’s the big story in the Caribbean. Only here? In one view, it’s a universal problem; we should pay up quietly, tolerate a world of overpriced contracts, runaway crime and substandard services. In another, it’s controllable. Sweden is cleaner than Serbia. Democracy allows aware voters to keep bad stuff in check. Transparency International last week released its Corruption Barometer survey, based this year on 114,000 interviews in 107 countries. That’s plenty data. There are obvious problems with an international survey. In some countries, people may be scared to say what they really think. In others, bribery has been rampant for generations past; “no worse than usual” may hide a multitude of sins. And there are difficulties with translation – a “simple” question may sound subtly different in Spanish or Serbian.