They held my passport ransom and began to drag
me to a police station nearby. We paid.
To do the fashionable thing and to hold the moral high ground is
rare. Yet, denouncing corruption and fighting it satisfies both
conditions. Such hectoring is usually the preserve of well-heeled
bureaucrats, driving utility vehicles and banging away at wireless
laptops. The General Manager of the IMF makes 400,000 US dollars a
year, tax-free, and perks. This is the equivalent of 2,300 (!)
monthly salaries of a civil servant in Macedonia - or 7,000 monthly
salaries of a teacher or a doctor in Yugoslavia, Moldova, Belarus,
or Albania. He flies only first class and each one of his air
tickets is worth the bi-annual income of a Macedonian factory
worker. His shareholders - among them poor and developing countries
- are forced to cough up these exorbitant fees and to finance the
luxurious lifestyle of the likes of Kohler and Wolfensohn. And then
they are made to listen to the IMF lecture them on belt tightening
and how uncompetitive their economies are due to their expensive
labour force. To me, such a double standard is the epitome of
corruption. Organizations such as the IMF and World Bank will never
be possessed of a shred of moral authority in these parts of the
world unless and until they forgo their conspicuous consumption.
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