The Expenses Scandal - The Aftermath

Last week the Expenses Scandal claimed its first proper victim meaning that someone is due to start a jail term after being convicted of fraudulent inflation of expenses on two residences that had been already fully paid for. The interesting issue that I wish to pick up on is that corruption in party politics is something that is not limited to developing nations alone.


It has been believed that it is only nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia can be cited for corruption in politics and the press always have a field day in reporting the different cases of graft that you find in successive government that rule in these developing democracies.


One then believes in a developed democracy that in a situation where people come to power in a situation where the have extensive holdings financially and speaking by principle should have no reason for graft whatsoever. But then it became the most unbelievable of suprises to see what our esteemed occupants of the Palace of Westminster had to reveal.


The Telegraph dedicated months to the revelations of the Scandal and it played out like a real-life soap opera over the better part of eighteen months and still hasn't finished yet. Giving us chapter,act and verse of the whole charade on felt like all things political nothing would come of it. Reforms would be the order of the day, a lot of those proven to have "stolen" something were allowed to keep some of their ill gotten gains if they nice gave something back.


And after the biggest names in Westminster at the time, the "royal family" of the then ruling Labour Party escaped censor and went into the night with their golden handshakes, intact one felt that would be the finale. Only for us to hear a whisper here and there that criminal proceedings had been intiated against serving parliament members concerning their dealings with said scandal.


Whatever the continent or state in question as long as the democracy is ruled by people, there will always be graft of some form taking place,though unacceptable it has quietly become the order of the way things are done. It might be a state of affairs properly documented in the developing world as their so-called "shame" but it is has now officially arrived at our shores and we should expect alot of it.