THE Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO), an arm of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP), has said it is glad that Transparency Institute Guyana Incorporated (TIGI) responded to its review of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).

The PYO had issued a previous statement explaining the issues facing an index that is subjective and that has been roundly criticised by Mahathir Mohamad (former Prime Minister of Malaysia), the World Bank, Fredrik Galtung (founding member and Head of Research at TI), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Global Integrity and The Economist, among others.
“There are many issues that render the CPI as null and void on measuring corruption. The PYO has examined the CPI produced by TI. We have concluded that our original view, based on the World Bank critiques, are correct and have actually been reinforced,” the latest PYO statement said.
It noted that the CPI has constantly been changing its methodology, a major change having occurred in 2009 when Professor Johann Lambsdroff, inventor of it, quit publishing the CPI.
According to the PYO, in his letter to Mr. Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of TI, Professor Lambsdroff stated that there are cases where “data failed to match with the reality”. He concluded that “TI-S will try to continue somehow with a substitute for the CPI. Even though most of them are rather new to the debate, they will try to make the new product look like the old one. This is time for me to let them go their way. I won’t be out there to provide academic credibility.”
“Since then, the CPI has gone through several iterations in the methodology used. The 2012 CPI has had a major modification to its methodology from the 2011. This means that no one can use TI data to claim that Guyana is worse off, better off or the same as previous years,” the PYO stated.

Constant tweaking
It maintained that the constant tweaking of the methodology would normally make such a task difficult. With the major changes implemented for the 2012 CPI, this task becomes impossible.
“These modifications completely dismiss the argument that there has been no progress in Guyana fighting corruption. Simply stated, TI’s constant methodology tweaking does not allow for this argument to even enter the realm of discussion,” the PYO asserted.
Its statement posited that TI uses the average of a standardised score of different surveys performed by various organisations. The scores can be 0 (highest level of perceived corruption) to 100 (lowest level of perceived corruption).
Continuing, the PYO said the terms ‘highest and lowest levels of perceived corruption’ are also very ambiguous and incredibly subjective and semantics are not the only flaws in the system.
“For example, when the scores in Global Index Country Risk Rating are standardised, we see many countries sharing the same score. Israel and Eritrea share a standardised score of 52. Yet, when averaged with other surveys’ standardised scores, these two countries are separated by 111 places,” the PYO argued.
Another example the release quoted is the standardised score of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Executive Opinion Survey, which gives a score of 43 for Iran and 34 to the Czech Republic. Yet, Iran is ranked 79 places lower than the Czech Republic.
In addition, it said the standardised scores of the Political Risk Services International Country Risk Guide gave Bangladesh and Qatar an equal score of 50 and Bangladesh is ranked 117 spaces behind Qatar.
The PYO contended: “There is obviously something wrong here. How can two countries share the same score on one survey but be separated by such huge margins when scores across several surveys are averaged? It is apparent that the individual surveys have major differences between each other, although they all claim to be measuring corruption.”

Different criteria
The statement said this would, therefore, make the averaging of scores between them an exercise in absurdity. The average scores are meaningless as each corruption survey undoubtedly uses different criteria to interpret and measure corruption.
Additionally, it continued that the individual surveys themselves have a flawed methodology.
The PYO had previously stated that the WEF scores cannot be trusted, if its country experts assess Guyana to have a better railway network than Serbia, an error the WEF has kept making for several consecutive years.
The statement maintained that the Guyana country experts have a different idea from those of Serbia, Brazil and Argentina when it comes to interpreting the meaning of railroad infrastructure.
“These vastly different interpretations have caused Guyana to rank above Serbia, Brazil and Argentina in railroad infrastructure development. These countries have thousands of kilometres of railway lines, yet Guyana is ranked above them. This is exactly the weakness that exists in perception surveys; different people have different perceptions about a situation,” it emphasised.
The PYO mentioned that the divergence in view becomes even starker when the people live and work in different countries and, therefore, have different experiences.
The statement pointed out that the WEF question in the Ethics and Corruption Section: “To what extent does the threat of terrorism impose costs on businesses in your country? [1 = to a great extent; 7 = not at all] ” will have very different interpretations in Guyana than in Syria.
“To illustrate this, the latter is ranked third (score = 6.6) while in the midst of a civil war. These examples show that personal bias, political or otherwise, play a major role in ranking. We can be fairly certain that the country experts in Syria are politically motivated; can we rule this out for Guyana?” the PYO asked.
The PYO urged TIGI to become more disconcerting and critical of the surveys and the effect the TI surveys have on Guyana.

Biased statements
It advised that, instead of making outlandish politically biased statements based on data that is known to be of little real value; TIGI should be advising TI on how to improve its work.
“The sensationalism that surrounds TI reports can have very damaging effect on foreign investors, ignorant of the true situation on the ground. Basing their assessment on faulty data and faulty methodology may prevent foreign investment and job creation,” the statement warned.
Moreover, it stated that the fact that TI’s own Bribe Payers Index varies significantly from its CPI should alert TIGI that a problem exists.
“The issues highlighted, together with the fact that TIGI is heavily staffed with Opposition political activists, do not give much credence to the CPI. The PYO urges TIGI to become a truly non-partisan organisation by fixing their obvious in-house biases,” the statement said.