The Rotten Tree Known as Parliament

There is a bright side to the British Parliament expenses scandal. For
one thing, many M.P.'s had the fortitude to walk right by that enormous parliamentary
trough and eat at home instead.<br>
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Second, Parliament showed the world how a failure to do the right thing
and do it transparently — seek larger incomes — and instead to take
public money clandestinely and then, when news started leaking out, to
deny and obfuscate, can completely undermine trust in a public
institution.<br>
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Too often, government ethics is seen as dealing with bad apples. But
the biggest problem in government ethics is not the bad apples, but the
bad ethics environments, the environments that allow or encourage
officials to put their private interests above the public interest, to
act in secret, and eventually to commit crimes against the community.<br>
<br>
Bad apples can be picked off a tree, and no one opposes this. But bad
ethics environments pollute the tree, so that the rot spreads too
easily through otherwise decent apples. And it becomes in the personal interest of
all officials to keep the rot from going public.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
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