Education wages a war on corruption

On March 15, Anglo-American University (AAU) was host to a discussion of one of the hottest topics in the contemporary political world: corruption. The half-day seminar, titled "Education as an Anti-Corruption Strategy," invited speakers and panelists from both the school's faculty and other public and private spheres of the Czech Republic to speak about ways to fight corruption. The best strategy in the battle, according to them, is education.

"We chose corruption because it is the biggest problem right now in the Czech Republic, Czech media and everywhere," said Jiří Chvojka, an AAU alumnus who was also one of the organizers of the seminar. "We would like to start a discussion about corruption itself as a phenomenon. Corruption and education seem like one way to start it."

AAU is an ideal setting for an anti-corruption seminar. Hrishabh Sandilya, the vice president of external relations at AAU, said AAU's founding included a mission to respond to the changes that appeared once post-communist society developed. "I think this seminar is the continuation of the same theme," he said.

Although the panel discussions mainly focused on corruption cases in the Czech Republic, the aim was to spread the message - with the help of the AAU students - across borders. "A lot of our students are from the intellectual elite in post-communist transition societies and the post-Soviet regions. So one thing we need to do, which goes along with AAU's message, is to educate them about this situation, about these problems, and hopefully when they return to their countries, such as Georgia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, they are able to help make the situation better," Sandilya said.

One of the main points was that corruption does not necessarily appear hand-in-hand wherever there is democracy. Instead, Karolína Peake, the country's deputy prime minister and a speaker at the event, said every political regime suffers from corruption, which is able to adapt itself to the environment. "It is not democracy that is at fault," she said. "However, it is democracy that is at stake, as people lose their faith in state institutions and the state itself."

Peake emphasized the harmful role corruption plays in every society. "Corruption is a crime, just like violence, just like theft, and it must be fought by the state. It will never disappear completely, but it must be fought," she said.

Although graft is often associated with bribery and the like, the AAU seminar worked to prove that corruption is not necessarily always connected to money. Instead, many various faces of corruption were revealed. Senator Jiří Oberfalzer, another one of the event's guest speakers, told an illustrative anecdote about receiving a phone call from an acquaintance whose father-in-law was in the hospital with what was assumed to be a heart attack. "He wanted me to talk to my colleague, the minister of health, and ask him to call the hospital and make sure his father-in-law receives all the necessary treatment," he said. "Corruption doesn't have to be about money."

Pavel Procházka, a journalist and editor-in-chief of Hattrick, a soccer magazine, was also on hand to verify the fact that corruption can affect many areas, even those that may at first seem unlikely targets, like sports. According to Procházka, an increase in betting along with the bribing of referees and players alike is slowly turning soccer into a corrupt sport. "They used to say 'a team plays not to win, but to participate.' Nowadays, a team plays not to win, but to bring money home," Procházka said.

Benjamin Tallis, an AAU lecturer in International Politics and a security expert for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, spoke of his concern with media coverage of corruption scandals. According to Tallis, the media attention often actually boosts the images of those involved in corruption by bestowing upon them the status of an almost mythological figure. "[It raises] this terrifying but also somewhat exciting and fetishistic moment," he said.

In the combat against corruption's infiltration and influence, most of the speakers agreed that education - though certainly powerful - is also closely tied to a society's level of morality, or lack thereof.

"Education is, of course, one of the tools," Peake said. "Education, however, only helps where the overall culture and level of ethics in the society is high. Corruption is not a problem of under-educated people. As we know, it is a typical white-collar crime - crime of well-educated but immoral people."

According to AAU's official statement on the conference, education remains one of the most potent tools in the hands of those that fight for what's right. In the ongoing battle against corruption, the question remains: How exactly can education best serve its purpose for the future?

"In the Czech Republic and most of Central Europe there are no schools for professional diplomats, for professional clerks," Chvojka said. "People should be both professionally and ethically educated to fight against corruption and to be more immune to corruption."

Anna Shamanska can be reached at
features@praguepost.com