Topic: Political Corruption in Latin America
Country: Vietnam
Delegate Name: Aurora Barkman
School: Royal Oak High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Vietnam position papers GLIMUN 2018 committees
Vietnam is all too familiar with the detrimental effects of governmental corruption on the economy, the welfare and safety of the people. In order to combat this, Vietnam has created a campaign over the past several years that seeks to eliminate the deep-rooted governmental corruption that has become rampant within our nation. We are currently in the throes of a war against the malfeasance that has occurred in alarming amounts among our countries public officials; we actively pursue the disposal of practices such as grafting and facilitation payments that continue to pollute our state. Therefore, we are in great support of the effort to reduce and ultimately eliminate corruption in Latin America.
Recently we have launched several internal investigations that resulted in the arrest of many of the politicians responsible for large scale embezzlement, fraud, and other criminal acts pertaining to the illegal use of government funds. We believe in order to fight corruption in Latin America or otherwise, an evaluation must be done from the top down. Nations must form internal committees with the intent to review the government’s central politicians and eliminate any internal corruption that plagues the ruling party. This must be done before any investigation into the many bureaucratic and governmental sects that suffer from the same quandaries.
Furthermore, increasing judicial independence will be paramount in the fight against corruption in Latin America. The process for choosing the attorney general and top judicial authorities should be reviewed and reformed in order to remove the corrupt special interest influences. Reviewing the top prosecutors of the South American nations will succeed in helping to restore the ability of a country to provide consistent and justifiable consequences for those accused of committing crimes against the government. This process will also help to hinder the powerful growing influence of drug cartels, an issue that is a root cause of the corruption in the Latin American region.
Another way we can begin to eliminate some corruption from Latin America is by making state campaigns and public contracting transparent. Most political campaign contributions are not reported in nations such as Mexico, and the bidding processes and use of public funds is private information. Making this information known will eliminate a lot of the illegal business practices that run rampant in the administrations of Latin American nations by making it impossible for enterprises to take money from special interests in secret.
Vietnam will offer the aid we can as we take action to reduce corruption in Latin America, for the good of the economy and the nation’s people. We intend to fully cooperate with all countries willing to offer progressive and implementable political solutions to improve our great world.
