Robert Mugabe is only the tip of the iceberg. Corruption and misgovernance in the Third World is so entrenched it amounts to a method. Although it is customary to treat the officials of countries and UN officials with dignity, many are in fact, little better than bandits and frauds. Personally, I can hardly believe it when I hear otherwise intelligent people say “we ought to entrust the safety of the world to the UN” or we should take the people in Hamas at the word. I hope they are lying. It would be more frightening to realize they actually believed it.
Take the recent horrifying ferry sinking in the Philippines, which is a corrupt but by no means the most corrupt of countries. Why did the ship sink. Incompetence and corruption. Will it change? Not in our lifetimes and certainly not while the fiction of official dignity and competence is maintained.
Bob Couttie of Maritime Accident Casebook describes why huge accidents like the tragic foundering of the MV Princess of Stars will continue unabated. First, the authorities investigate themselves and typically find themselves faultless. “Despite the regularity of maritime incidents in Philippine waters there is no full-time independent maritime investigation agency in the Philippines. Marina, the country’s maritime regulatory body delegates its enforcement functions to the Philippine Coastguard, which allowed the vessel to leave Manila as the typhoon was approaching. Both agencies will conduct the investigation.” Second, its corrupt bureaucrats pay only lip service to international maritime regulations.
International maritime investigators would like to bring the Philippines within the fold and help it develop a more realistic and effective investigative capability but the political will is lacking, which may not be unconnected with the high level connections between ferry companies, shipowners and the country’s legislators. It is unlikely that the Philippines will respond to the new IMO code of conduct for maritime casualty investigation any time soon. Despite becoming a member in the mid-1960s the Philippines has yet to lodge a single maritime casualty investigation report with the IMO, as it is mandated to do for serious casualties under the terms of its membership, despite the recent election of a Filipino, Neil Ferrer, as IMO deputy secretary general. …
Death came early this year. The typhoon season has only just started and already, brightly coloured flop-flop rubber sandals are arriving on the coastlines of Sibuyan in the central Philippines. They are very small slippers because many children were among the 800 or so aboard the 1984-built 23,824 tonnes Sulpicio Lines ferry Princess Of The Stars that capsized on morning of June 21 in a typhoon known internationally as Fengshen and in the Philippines as Frank. … The Philippines will continue to ignore its obligations to the IMO and to the security of its travelling public because there isn’t the political will to do otherwise no matter how many children’s rubber slippers wash up on its beaches.
