Poll shows drop in small cases; some say it's not even small step

By LAURENCE ILIFF / The Dallas Morning News

LA PAZ, Mexico – A cop stands at an intersection in this tidy state capital on the Baja peninsula, occasionally stopping cars for traffic violations. Invariably, the
driver protests. And then the officer does something truly remarkable for Mexico: Again and again, he writes a ticket, hands it to the driver, and steps away.

In most of this graft-ridden nation, such an encounter would result in a bribe to the officer about 50 percent of the time, according to a new poll measuring corruption
at the street level.

Similarly, money often must change hands to obtain a driver's license, to park on a public street where parking is technically free, or even to file a police report.

Nationwide, these small bribes add up to a $1 billion enterprise, the poll of 14,000 people by the advocacy group Mexican Transparency showed.

But the business of bribery is fading in La Paz and the entire northern state of Baja California Sur, which is leading a national trend toward less corruption after
decades of steady increases.

Baja California Sur had the lowest incidence of bribes, called la mordida, or "the bite," according to those polled in the November survey.

"This is a place where you pretty much have to play by the rules," said Felipe López Macias, 45, a La Paz sanitation worker. "People sometimes want to give us
money to take things away that are too big. Most of the time, most of the workers say no."

That trend may be slowly catching on around the country.

With the new poll, investigators for the first time have documented a notable decrease in the use of the mordida to force public servants – and employees of the few
private companies that provide public services – to do their jobs.

The first poll to measure the frequency of the mordida was conducted by Mexican Transparency in 2001, following the electoral upheaval a year earlier in which the
former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party lost the presidency for the first time in 71 years.

Mexico's world-famous, income-robbing corruption was a major issue in the campaign of President Vicente Fox and nearly every other politician.

Politicians on the federal, state and local levels have tried everything from placing surveillance cameras in government offices to posting massive signs reading
"services provided here are free." There have been sting operations and criminal prosecutions, and the city of Puebla even did away with traffic fines altogether to
reduce corruption.

Some of that, the survey showed, appears to have worked.

"The fact is that Mexico has become a more open society politically. There is more freedom of information, and that is having an effect," said Sergio Sarmiento, a
political commentator for TV Azteca, which partially funded the latest poll. "In a more open society, it's more difficult to ask for a bribe and to pay bribes."

Mr. Sarmiento, who said he was surprised by the results of the survey, offered two other interpretations of the data: He said the economic downturn may have made
it harder for people to pay bribes. He also noted that people could be reluctant to tell pollsters that they are involved in bribery.

The small stuff

The survey of "Corruption and Good Government" focused on the small-time mordida but did not measure other types of corruption, such as kickbacks on public
works, bribes paid to law enforcement by drug traffickers or skimming of government funds.

In Baja California Sur, state residents had to pay a bribe only about 2 percent of the time for any of 38 different public and private services, including getting the
trash picked up, the survey showed. The average bribe was about $10.

Nationwide, the percentage of times a bribe was needed to obtain any of these 38 public services fell from an average of 10.5 percent two years ago to 8.5 percent
this year.

The survey compared Mexico's 31 states and its capital city.

Nearly every state showed improvement. Even some poor, rural states like Chiapas in southern Mexico managed to cut mordidas by a third or more. Mexico City,
which was deemed the second most corrupt area in the nation, nonetheless sliced its incidence of bribe-induced services from 22.6 percent to 13.2 percent.

The state of Puebla, home to the city with the aggressive anti-bribery campaign, came in last on corruption. Bribes were used 18 percent of the time in exchange for
public services, the survey found.

In response to the survey results, the state government of Puebla said that in a different survey conducted by a private business group, it was the second-cleanest
state in terms of bribery.

Despite the overall improvements cited in the transparency survey, Mexico is still a long way from being squeaky clean. Mexico ranked 64th out of 133 countries in
the 2003 international "Corruption Perceptions Index" compiled by the global anti-graft group Transparency International. Finland ranked No. 1, and the United
States was No. 18.

And while Baja California Sur residents are clearly pleased with government practices that have led to less bribery, other Mexicans said they had seen no
improvement despite vigorous promises by their elected leaders.

"You hear less about it on the news, but no, corruption has not decreased," said Susana Hernández, 29, a Mexico City office worker. "Someone who is outside the
government can be the most honest person, but once they are inside the government, the power to do whatever they want can change that person, and that's why it's
so hard to reduce corruption."

Pretty big flaw

The head of the independent Demotecnia polling firm, María de las Heras, said there's a pretty big flaw in Mexican Transparency's survey. While it measures one
part of the corruption equation quite well, she said, it ignores the rest and therefore is not a true measure of "Corruption and Good Government," as it is billed.

"The survey is not poorly done, but it is poorly focused on the mordida," Ms. De las Heras said. "I don't think that's where the real corruption in this country lies. I
think it's at different levels and in different proportions."

She also criticized the comparison of relatively small states, with their uncomplicated lifestyles, to the urban chaos of the Mexico City metropolitan area, with its 18
million people. People pay bribes in the cities in part because life is filled with conflicts that must be resolved quickly, she said.

No one at Mexican Transparency is suggesting that corruption is a thing of the past.

Even in Baja California Sur, some motorists admitted that they sometimes gave police a $5 bribe, for example, rather than accepting a ticket for an $80 fine.

The nationwide 2003 survey registered nearly 101 million acts of corruption in the use of public services over the last 12 months. An average Mexican household
spent 7 percent of its income on bribes, the group said, and the very poorest families spent nearly 30 percent of their income on mordidas.

And public servants were not the only ones doing the biting.

To park on a public street in many cities, one must give a "tip" to the mostly young men who have appropriated that chunk of sidewalk and turned it into a small
business. The survey found this was the case 46 percent of the time in the 2003 survey (down from 56 percent in 2001).

Inspectors for private firms that do vehicle smog checks sometimes need something to chew on to make absolutely sure that emissions are within legal limits. That
happens 11.5 percent of the time (down from 14.5 percent in 2001).

But the governor of Baja California Sur said there is hope for the nation in the fight against corruption.

"This state was one of the most corrupt in the nation, a place where everyone knew that 10 percent of all public works projects went to government officials" in
kickbacks, said Gov. Leonel Cota Montaño, who took office five years ago.

"We worked with the public servants ... and we told citizens to stop giving mordidas to public servants and to denounce any of them who asked for a bribe," said
Mr. Cota, whose state came in second for having the least mordidas in the 2001 survey.

One of the first things he did as governor, Mr. Cota said, was to clean house and put everyone on notice that any citizen complaint would be investigated, public
servants would be fired if they took a bribe, and some would face criminal charges.

"This is not a triumph forever, this is a triumph for now," said Mr. Cota. "We must keep working today and tomorrow."