Moral Foundation of Political System

Any political system needs to have a moral foundation. Even though the main topic of this thesis is to deal with the essence of corruption in its generic aspect, the case of Ethiopia has been given an emphasis in relation to the issue of corruption as an example. Like in any other society, corruption thrives in Ethiopia. This is because of our collective derailment onto the philosophical lane of excessive materialism, selfish individualism, exploitative capitalism and atheistic personality. Our moral values have thus been eroded and we have removed morality from the arena of our socio-political life.

God too has been thrown overboard from our daily lives and when we do remember him, we do so hypocritically.

We have sacrificed the common good on the altar of our insatiable selfish desires, and our ultimate happiness (Summumbonuum) has been confused with the merely temporal, ephemeral and transitory. In religious terms (i.e. The Ethiopian society is largely a religious society), we may say we have abandoned the living spring and dug up cisterns for ourselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Our nation lies in ruins because of our collective mistake. Unless we retrace our steps along the path of morality, the path of high ethical standards, and allow these to permeate our everyday lives, both as individuals and as a nation, we can never rise above the pit of our underdevelopment.

There is, therefore, an urgent need for an indebt and thoroughgoing ethical re-orientation and education particularly in Ethiopia. Apart from reinstating the place of moral education in the educational curriculum, there is also the need to carry out mass enlightenment campaigns through the print and electronic media, through plays, the entertainment industries, government sponsored television shows, fliers, articles on papers, newspapers and even books.

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Ethical standards should be insisted upon in every sector and aspect of the people’s lives and those making efforts should be singled out and rewarded, especially those who have the public responsibility entrusted to them.

The first people that come to mind are policy makers and implementers – those in Government – since their actions and inactions, in this regard, have a lot of influence on the crusade against corruption. Victor Dike has rightly remarked that to win the war on corruption, adherence to ethical standards in decision-making must be the foundation of the nation’s policies. Without ethics in the conduct of the affairs of the nation (public and business), the apparent wars on corruption in Ethiopia will not be successful. In other words, without ethics, any money budgeted towards fighting corruption in Ethiopia is a thing cast to the wild cat. Ethiopia has to make a more firm law and implement them to the letter. As Aristotle insists the aim of ethical philosophy is practical – to make us better men (www.africaeconomicanalysis.org).

What this means is that our much desired economic recovery and national development cannot be achieved unless we eschew corruption from our individual and national lives and embrace the virtues of honesty, patriotism and altruism. However in order to achieve those objectives ethical re-orientation alone is not enough, because in modern times corruption is by in large manifested in public sectors. Therefore, Emphasizing on political corruption in particular is necessary.

Even though in the last two decades there is an official attempt to fight corruption in the national level, we still face the challenges of corruption in private and public systems of our democratic state. We can mention different attempts to bribe judges, police or public officials in order to gain personal advantage by individuals. Or we can mention immoral activities of corporations contributing to lobbying of government ministers or government officials in order to promote their interests or give private enterprises better contracts as the basis for collaboration with states.

We can also mention international movement of capitals where corporations in contrast to established rules still act with corruption like practices for example when dealing with new contracts on foreign markets. Here we face the danger of international manipulation with powers of governments in different countries.

In this paper I argued and tried to show both ethical re-orientation and political strategy transformation cannot be successful for the fight against corruption, if they are implemented alone. Therefore, I suggest that implementing both of them simultaneously is the better and effective way to the struggle against corruption.