BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

3. Fragility of Democracy and Strengthening of Corruption: some final considerations. Certainly, the historical form of constitution and use of the public sphere of politics has contributed much to the phenomenon of corruption – as we have seen so far – and this fundamentally in the face of a vicious perspective of the traditional political culture that conceives political life and public offices as business opportunities to enrich and reward friends and accomplices, taking advantage of the confidence placed in them by voting for, or blatantly committing corruption, or using illicit and sophisticated legal instruments (such as public procurement, public tenders, public policies) to commit the most varied forms of corruption that are difficult to measure. These different forms of corruptive practices – and their always predatory effects – mean that we also have different methods and procedures for dealing with them, distributed among Society, State and Market, because all of them are co-responsible for it. The problem is that corruption is contagious! It extends from the sphere of public life, as we have seen, even to private life (as is the case of the famous Gérson law so used in Brazilian reality). 34 In private life, for example, we have the news that the foreign tourist in some parts of Brazil, as in Rio de Janeiro, has to spend 46% more than the carioca of the yolk to access the same products on the beach, and verify the testimony of a Brazilian reporter who, pretending to be a foreigner, asked a street vendor how much it cost to rent an umbrella and a chair, in which he followed the answer: Barraca at $ 15 and chair for $ 10 ! Five minutes later, the same reporter went to the same tent and asked how much it cost to rent a chair and an umbrella, having the same seller said: $ 10 the umbrella and $ 7 a chair! When negotiating the price, saying that he would consume in the tent, he got the final price of R $ 15! 35 And so, with its capacity for seduction, corruption promises and realizes undeserved or lawful rewards. And worse, as Girling warns us, if we let it go, it will extend, multiply, intensify, systematize, and eventually become institutionalized, becoming the rule rather than the exception. 36 And when we get to that point, there is no doubt that corruption constitutes a threat to Civil Society itself, because it operates the transfiguration of representative institutions, which are left behind by illicit (and opaque) spaces of political articulation and binding public deliberation (through laws, administrative acts, public policies, judicial decisions, market manipulation). 34 In 1976, Brazil’s three-time world football champion Gérson starred in a cigarette commercial stating that: Why pay more if the Village gives me everything I want from a good cigarette? I like to take advantage of everything, right? Take advantage you too, take Vila Rica! From then on any unethical or unethical behavior in private or public relations came to be known as Gérson’s Law. In another direction, addressing more technical issues related to public management, see the work of MENDONÇA. E. B. F. de.: The constitutionalization of public finances in Brazil: due budget process and democracy . Rio de Janeiro: Renovar, 2010. 35 See the article on the site: https://espacoacademico.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/a-lei-de-gerson-revisitada/, access on 03/20/2017. 36 GIRLING, J.: Corruption, capitalism and democracy . London / New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 87. See also the excellent text organized by GIRALDO, César (Org.). Rescue of the Public: Financial Power and Social Rights . Bogotá: Ediciones from Abajo, Colombian Academy of Economic Sciences and Cesde, 2003.

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