WE cannot sit pretty as a topper on the global corruption dossier with all the adverse publicity it brings on our image. Infamy is unsavoury, unpalatable and thus not easy to digest. But the feeling gets even worse for the fact that we have emerged as the most corrupt country in the world for the third year running.

The Berlin-based Transparency International has put Bangladesh atop the list of corrupt countries on the basis of a 'perception' index. The ranking reflected the perception of business people, academics and risk analysts, both resident and non-resident. Impressions are not immutable; these are amenable to change depending upon how seriously a country, tainted by corruption, took its adverse for turning things around. In fact, some of the poorly performing countries in the perception index of previous years bettered their records for 2003. Bangladesh by default evidently does not belong to that category.

It is hardly a consolation that we have ranked that badly not among 190 plus countries there are on the globe but among 133 countries tested on the corruption index, leaving a large number out of the transparency evaluation exercise.

'Perception' is important, because it is a synonym for image, good or bad. To be dismissive about a negative one can only bring greater harm to national image, which in turn, needless to say, could tell upon investment prospects of the country.

The government of the day, whether this one or the previous one has been rejectionist towards Transparency International's corruption ranking of Bangladesh. In our alternating scenarios of changing of the guard between the AL and the BNP, every time the TI came out with its finding, the party in power tried to debunk it while that in the opposition invariably fell for using it as a propaganda tool against the government. In the present case, finance and planning minister M Saifur Rahman has gone a step further as a government's spokesman: he has taken upon himself the task of probing the basis of TI's ranking of Bangladesh, whatever that means! He has already questioned the validity of the corruption rating saying it was based on newspaper reports and comments. Is another conspiracy theory on the anvil to attribute the ranking to some 'dubious' sources like it was touted during the erstwhile government? We hope not.

Amidst the reaction overkill of the ruling party to the TI report and the opposition deriving ammunition from it to use against the government, the real issues of corruption are getting obscured once again. The heart of the matter is corruption has evolved to this state with contributions from both AL and BNP governments. The malaise fed on inaction proliferating across the institutions over time. If the TI's report caused 'embarrassment' to a ruling party, successive governments' failure to combat corruption has brought disrepute to the whole country.

So obsessive have we been about the ranking that the need for an all-out action programme was lost on us. There ought to have been a three-pronged strategy to contain corruption. First of all, we should have taken issue with the development partners and multilateral financing institutions to have them enforce international conventions to curb bribery by transnational companies. The TI report pertinently underlines the imperative necessity for making sure 'private businesses fulfil their obligations under the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, namely to stop bribing public officials around the world.'

Internally, we do need to simplify the procedures in government offices and public sector corporations. An overarching remedial solution would be to introduce Egovernance at all levels. Technology is there to employ to seal the routes of corruption in the public service and business arenas. The government must welcome a greater civil society role in combating corruption. Last but not least, the missing institutional links have to be provided: how dare we fight corruption without strong local selfgoverning tiers, a truly independent anti-corruption commission and an ombudsman's office in place?