Brunei's Anti Corruption Bureau

I am looking through the Transparency International publication entitled the 2009 Global Corruption Barometer given to my by my colleague at Anti corruption Bureau. The report was recently highlighted in the local press about Brunei's position in the fight against corruption.

The interesting bit about this report is how the report was derived. For Brunei's case, 820 Bruneians were interviewed by phone. It was conducted by a Malaysian company called Merdeka Center. For statisticians, 820 is a significant number. Anything more than 30 and approaching about a 1,000 is always statistically significant and can be relied upon as long as the people chosen are chosen at random.

The interview was conducted between 20 to 25 February this year. The telephone interview is not uncommon. I looked through the entire list, there wee a few other countries which this method was used. Bosnia, Colombia, Greece, Israel, Malaysia (done by same company), Portugal, Spain and Thailand. Most others were done face to face. Afew used computer assisted web interviews and online survey. Hong Kong and Singapore were done using online via access panels. Not sure what that is.

The first table 'To what extent do you perceive the following institutions in this country to be affected by corruption? (1: Not All Corrupt, 5: Extremely Corrupt).' For Brunei, the scores are:

Political Parties 2.1
Parliament/Legislature 2.1
Business/Private Sector 2.7
Media 1.9
Public Officials/Civil Servants 2.6
Judiciary 2.0
Average Score 2.3

Table 2 'Which of these six sectors/organisations would you consider to be the most affected by corruption?' For Brunei, the scores are:

Political Parties 10%
Parliament/Legislature 3%
Business/Private Sector 44%
Media 4%
Public Officials/Civil Servants 33%
Judiciary 2.0 6%

Table 3 'In the past 12 months, have you or anyone living in your household paid a bribe in any form?' For Brunei, the score is 1%. Only Brunei and Japan scored 1%, Singapore scored 6% and Indonesia 29%.

Table 4 'How would you assess your current government's actions in the fight against corruption?' For Brunei, the scores are:

Ineffective 17%
Neither 5%
Effective 78%

Comparatively speaking BMR has done well against most of the other nations, developed or developing. Well done!

If you do want to know more about the anti corruption bureau, you can go to their very up to date website www.bmr.gov.bn and the director's personal blogs on www.anticorruptionwatch.blogspot.com or go to the Anti Corruption Brueau on facebook. And they are always available if you need to make any complaint about corruption.