Colombia’s Comptroller General on Wednesday said the country is losing the battle against corruption, local media reported.
According to Sandra Morelli, “Colombia does not show satisfactory results today in the fight against corruption.” The momentum that was present at the beginning of President Juan Manuel Santos’ administration “has been lost,” Morelli told W Radio.
“Here as a country, as a state, I think we have not killed the snake [because we] got scared by the leather…there must be a reaction [against corruption] as strong as it was at the beginning of the Santos administration.”
Corruption has been a hot button topic of late. Colombia’s Inspector General last week said that there has never been so much corruption in Colombia’s government and businesses and the Finance Minister admitted that embezzlement was one of the main hindrances to development.
“Never before in history has there been so much talk of transparency, never before have there been so many conventions, never before have there been so many national and international conferences, never before has there been so many officials provisioned to defining policies in the fight against corruption, yet there has never been so much drama or presence of it [corruption] that discredits our institutions,” declared Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez.
According to a 2012 report from Transparency International, Colombians’ perception of corruption in their country worsened compared to last year.