Yesterday, the “Transparency International” organization (a global organization which takes Berlin as headquarter) issued its latest “Corruption Perception Index” for the year 2008, in which our dear Lebanon was sadly ranked 102^nd among 180 countries included in the report. This rank considers a retreat from last year’s position (99^th) as well as the 2006 classification where it was ranked in the 63^rd position. But even though the position is getting worse, the grades given saw some improvement since 2005 (after the end of the Syrian occupation), since Lebanon earned an average of over 3 points in the last 3 years after scoring only a poor 2.7 points in 2004.

Of course nothing to be happy with this ranking, and it isn’t a surprise for anyone, since we already knew that we suffer from corruption in Lebanon on all levels, but what is sad about the issue is that we came in a really late position among Arab countries (11^th among 20), with only Mauritania, Egypt (both 115), Libya (126), Comoros (134), Yemen (141), Syria (147 – the only good news in the report), Sudan (173), Iraq (174), and Somalia (180) coming behind.

Maybe it shows how much we are losing, but also how much others are gaining on us, and not only regarding corruption, but concerning other signs of civilization, education, culture, and others.

This reminds me of lots of things we are losing in Lebanon, mainly our lifestyle that others were envying us for having, and were trying and still to do the same.

We are losing our education level, and here I remember a while ago hearing that Lebanese students used to score more than 95% in the Toefel test, but lately they couldn’t manage to score more than 73%.

It is a sign of backwardness caused by corruption in everything in Lebanon, and that’s why we are lacking the simplest services, such as electricity, water, telephones, medical, educational (we were the best in the last 2), good social security, and security as a whole.

Obviously we have our whole sectarian, policitical, and administrative system to blame, but we should not only hold our governments and politicians responsible for that, we should also blame ourselves, because we the Lebanese people have been contributing a lot in this regard, since we still have the culture of “Wasta”, “Tozbitat” and Bribery among others, so to help our score to improve in corruption, let us first try to abolish that culture, and do something without seeking “Wasta” first, and without trying to bribe the public servants.